Knowledge Update

New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) Domestic mobile manufacturer Videocon smartphone recently introduced a panic button app with its newly launched smartphone Videocon Cube 3 to get help in any emergency. The app named 'SOS-Be Safe' comes with highly responsive and ingenious features including alert, walk with me, and reach on time. The users can click these features from their smartphone status bar and set security preferences like time, distance and contacts. "With smartphones impacting our lives in many ways, emergency response system or panic button is certainly the need of the hour. We are confident that 'SOS-Be Safe' app will assist smartphone users during different kind of emergency situations," said Akshay Dhoot, Head - Technology and Innovation, Videocon in a statement. The new app also makes the best use of GPS and provides a map view of nearby police stations and hospitals for any critical situation.

London, Sep 8 (IANS) Before buying a product, consumers are often likely to search and review online hundreds of available items in any category for up to a month. However, what they purchase tends to be remarkably close to the items they searched and found in their very first search, says a study. "Consumers don't explore anywhere close to full range of products and attributes in the category. The final product they purchase is very close in terms of the attributes to the products they discovered on the first day," said Bart Bronnenberg of Tilburg University in the Netherlands. The study finds that about 25 per cent of consumers search and purchase in just one online session. The average purchase takes much longer -- around 15 days and over six sessions. The vast majority of purchases happen in under a month. Further, about 40 per cent of consumers search only one brand and 20 per cent only one model, while the average consumer will search about three brands and six models. "People differ in their search behaviour a lot. Some make up their mind right away but others search for long periods - often up to a month and review many products," added Carl Mela of Duke University in North Carolina, US. This suggests that consumers have a rough idea of the quality and type of features they want as they begin search. The search helps them merely to refine the right combination of features within the narrow range of features of the products they found on the first day. For marketers, a long period of search can be a great opportunity to influence the exploration and discovery of new products during search and purchase. "The fact that what people buy is close to what they initially found means that the advertising targeting and product recommendations can use this information effectively and recommend close variants of what the consumer initially searched and found," explained Jun Kim of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The study focussed on online search and purchase behaviour of consumers in the digital camera category. The team combined detailed consumer online browsing and purchase data for digital cameras from the online measurement firm comScore, with scraped camera product pages from the three largest online retailers - Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart - to uncover a variety of insights about online consumer search behaviour. They used a sample of more than 1,000 digital camera purchases with full browsing histories over a three-month period. The article is forthcoming in the journal Marketing Science

​New York, Sep 8 (IANS) How a car looks can go a long way in determine how much it sells and researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have now found what design elements prime a car's popularity. By combining data on aesthetic design and sales, the researchers showed that while customers do not like cars to look too different from the market average, they also do not want something that looks too similar. When buying a luxury car, it is more important that the car looks consistent with the brand, and less important that it looks like other cars in the market segment. Cars in the economy segment can gain in popularity by mimicking the aesthetics of their luxury counterparts, the study said. The findings will help marketing professionals make better decisions on aesthetic design, and can be applied to a wide range of product categories including electronics, wearable technologies and household appliances, said Subramanian "Bala" Balachander, Professor at University of California, Riverside, in the US. "Using our quantitative design model, product design managers in all sectors can forecast sales and profits of alternative aesthetic designs," Balachander said. Although quantifying the physical appearance of real products is challenging, the researchers used a recently developed morphing technique to construct the "average" car in a particular market segment or brand from a series of individual pictures. Once developed, the researchers determined the similarity of more than 200 car models from 33 brands sold in the US between 2003 and 2010 to that average, examining their segment prototypicality (how typical a product is compared to other products in the same market), brand consistency (how much a product looks like the average product in a brand's product lineup) and cross-segment mimicry (how much the design of an economy product mimics a luxury product), while controlling for other variables such as price and advertising. Their results, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing, showed that the aesthetic design of a product can have a significant effect on consumer preference, with consumers preferring products that are neither too similar to the average product nor drastically different.

​San Francisco, Sep 8 (IANS) Ending round-the-clock rumours that had sent the world of technology into a tizzy for quite some time now, Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday unveiled stunning iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus along with next-generation 'Apple Watch Series 2' at the jam-packed Bill Graham Civic Auditorium here. iPhone 7 will cost the same as iPhone 6s, starting at $649 (US price) and comes in three variants: 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB (16 GB variant no more). iPhone 7 Plus will start at $769. Pre-orders for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus begins from September 9 and the shipping will start from September 16 at first in 28 countries, with 30 more countries one week later, Tech Crunch reported. So, this is what iPhone 7 finally has: Water and dust resistance, dual-lens camera (in iPhone 7 Plus), 4.6-inch retina HD display, a new home button, 7 MP HD front camera and 12 MP rear main camera, no traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack, iOS 10, A10 fusion chip and and longest battery life to date. The phone will come in rose gold, gold, silver, black, and jet black colours. "Optical image stabilisation in all new iPhones, allowing for up to 3x longer exposure," Tech Crunch said. Apple's twin lens setup is wide angle and telephoto in the iPhone 7 Plus. For actual, optical zoom, one lens handles 1x zoom; the other handles 2x, the report added. iPhone 7 Plus now has 10x zoom. The camera app is getting a "portrait" mode that'll use the dual-lenses and depth mapping to simulate the DSLR visual quality. "We're not saying that iPhone replaces your DSLR. We're saying this is the best camera we've ever built in any iPhone. For many customers, it'll be the best camera they've ever owned," said Philip W. Schiller, Senior Vice President (Worldwide Marketing) at Apple. Starting at $369, the 'Apple Watch Series 2' will be water resistant to 50 metres and the speaker will literally repel the water like a piston. Pre-orders for 'Series 2' will open on September 9 and the shipment will start from September 16. The device will have a dual core processor with GPU that is up to two times faster. The second generation watch will have the brightest display ever (1,000 nits so that users can see it in full sunlight) and runs watchOS 3. "If you've used a GPS Watch before, you know that sometimes it can take a while to connect to satellites. With Apple Watch, you just hit start and it's ready," Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer, told the gathering. The company also launched wireless headphones called Airpods that will cost $159. Infrared sensors will detect when the AirPods are in your ear. It comes with a compact charging case with 24 hours of additional battery charge. Apple also unveiled Apple Watch Nike+ -- a watch built with runners in mind. "Selling in just eight months of 2015, we became the second most popular watch brand [behind Rolex]," Williams said earlier. "Since its launch, Apple Music has grown to 17 million subscribers. Seventeen million Apple Music subscribers compared to 39 million for digital music service Spotify," Apple CEO Tim Cook announced. "140 billion apps have been downloaded from the iOS App Store till date. In the last two months, we've seen [downloads] grow by 106 per cent year over year," Cook told the audience, adding that Apple App Store has seen two times as much revenue as our closest competitor. Apple also debuted a 'Notify' option on the App Store for a brand new "Super Mario Run" game. The GPS-powered Pokemon Go game has also arrived on Apple Watch. Apple has sold over one billion iPhones till date.

​New Delhi, July 26 (IANS) Chinese internet and technology conglomerate LeEco has launched a new video membership brand targeted at young consumers at the San Diego International Comic-Con (SDCC) held between July 21 and 24 at the San Diego Convention Centre in the US. The "Letv membership for Z-Generation" was launched on July 22 at an event hosted by famous talk show comedian Joe Wong. It aims to bring a wide range of online, offline and online-to-offline membership privileges and benefits, including free movie tickets, priority to buy movie and TV show merchandise, fan events, birthday package, production site visits, offline parties, movie previews, and participation in cast selection and crowdfunding. LeEco has entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with American film production/distribution studio Lionsgate to license content from its Comic-Con HQ streaming service, under which "Letv membership for Z-Generation subscribers" can view hours of exclusive content.​

Beijing, July 26 (IANS) Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee on Tuesday unveiled its much-awaited flagship smartphones M6 and M6 Plus. M6 is equipped with a front fingerprint scanner, privacy protection and malware destruction although it lacks the hardware encryption feature. While M6 is packed with 5000mAh battery, M6 Plus houses 6020mAh battery unit. M6 features a 5.5-inch full HD AMOLED display, 4GB RAM, 64GB in-built memory that can be expanded up to 128GB and runs on Amigo 3.2 operating system on top of Android 6.0. M6 sports 13MP rear camera and a 8MP front camera. "Gionee M6 has outstanding performance via the breakthrough software and hardware which will make every consumer smile from their heart," said William Lu, President, Gionee, in a statement.​

​Beijing, July 26 (IANS) Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is now the leader in the home smartphone market with 23 per cent market share, followed by Huawei with 17.4 per cent and Vivo with 12 per cent, a media report said on Tuesday. Oppo's market share right now is also more than both Apple and Samsung combined in China. Apple's share in China has shrunk to 2014 levels at nine per cent and Xiaomi is at a three-year low with 6.8 per cent. Back in 2014, Oppo was responsible for less than two per cent of the smartphones sold in China. By June 2015, Oppo's share has grown up to 6.1 per cent and now in June this year, its up to a historic high at 22.9 per cent, tech website GSMArena reported. Prior to this, Huawei and Xiaomi were leading the way. In fact, Xiaomi appears to only make 6.8 per cent of China’s smartphones, down from 15.1 per cent in the previous year. Oppo R9, sold elsewhere as Oppo F1 Plus, is the best-selling device in June with five per cent market share. Oppo will be launching its next selfie-focused smartphone, the Oppo F1s, a successor to the popular Oppo F1 device, on August 3. Billed as a "selfie expert," the device can have some improvements in the camera compared to that of its predecessor but it's still not confirmed exactly what will be better this time around.​

​Washington, July 17 (IANS) A malicious gaming app called Pokemon Go Ultimate, the first "lockscreen" app has made its way onto the Google Play store, said software security company ESET. The app when downloaded and run is not installed as Pokemon Go but as "PI Network", a report published in the Fortune said. Anyone who ran that app would find their phone completely frozen, forcing them to restart the phone by removing the battery. After rebooting, the PI Network app seemed to disappear, but in fact continued running in the background and generating fake ad clicks, stated Fortune. The Pokemon Go gaming app uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) capabilities of the device in conjunction with Google Maps to place virtual creatures in real world locations, which one then tries to find using your device as a guide. Once in proximity to the placed creature, one then needs to use device's camera to view the creature and try to capture it. ESET also spotted several other malicious apps, including Install Pokemongo and Guide & Cheats for Pokemon Go. The plague of malicious tricks surrounding the augmented-reality game highlights the security risk posed by Android's relatively open app ecosystem. Though the specific apps highlighted by ESET seem to have been removed from Google Play Store, a search found several apps named with variations on Install Pokemon Go. The app, however, has been pulled off from Google Play, ESET reported. One can uninstall the app manually by going to their phone's application manager. The Pokemon Go is available on Google Playstore and Apple's App Store in the US, Japan and Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, Britain and Germany and is coming soon to India, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia.

New York, July 16 (IANS) Soon after technology giant Apple reported its first-ever quarterly drop in iPhone sales in April, a new report has found that "the outlook for iPhone demand keeps getting murkier" as other leading smartphone brands like Samsung make inroads in the market. The number of iPhone units sold would tumble 12 per cent from 2015 and the upcoming iPhone 7 would be "a marginal cycle at best", New York Post reported, quoting a Wall Street analyst on Friday. Recently, retail data insights and consulting business Kantar Retail reported that Samsung’s Galaxy 7 line of smartphones grabbed 16 per cent of total sales in the US during the three months ended May 31, exceeding the 14.6 per cent of sales for the iPhone 6s. As the momentum of the 6s has slowed down, investors are worried about iPhone 7 that the device might not be a significant upgrade. Mark Moskowitz of Barclays forecast that this year’s iPhone unit sales would total 203.7 million down from 231.5 million last year. The report by Kantar not only mentioned the threat to Apple but to its biggest rival Samsung as well by the increasing competition from lower-priced rivals, most notably China-based Xiaomi and Huawei. “Apple and Samsung should stop worrying so much about each other and take a look around them,” Kantar analyst Lauren Guenveur was quoted as saying, noting that Huawei aims to overtake Apple as the second-largest smartphone seller by 2020. Guenveur also noted that “rumours are swirling” that Google will soon introduce a handset of its own. Earlier this week, research firm IDC said Apple’s share of the worldwide PC market shrank to 7.1 per cent from 7.4 per cent as customers hold out for a long-awaited refresh to the MacBook Pro line. Apple is slated to give an update on recent demand when it reports results on July 26.​

​Japanese car manufacturer Honda Motor together with Daido Steel has developed the first ever engine for hybrid cars without using dysprosium and terbium -- two scarce rare earth elements -- to help reduce manufacturing costs, an official said on Wednesday.

The two companies have made sure that the neodymium magnet -- presenting the highest magnetic force of nature which is essential for electric cars and hybrids -- of this engine does not require the use of these two minerals, which were used to withstand high temperatures, EFE news reported.

Both dysprosium and terbium, like neodymium are classified as rare earth elements, although the latter is almost as common as nickel or cobalt. In contrast, dysprosium and terbium were far more scarce and most of it comes from China, which sometimes restricts exports, putting price stability and supply at risk. Honda has modified the engine design to incorporate this new magnet and has proven that the "torque, output and heat resistance performance (is) equivalent to those of a motor that uses the conventional type of magnet," Honda said.​

Tokyo, July 13 (IANS)