Galaxy Note 3, Xperia Z1 coming to India next week

NEW DELHI: Get ready for the next-generation smartphones. The recently announced Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z1 and LG G2 will be launched in India in the coming weeks. While the Samsung device will be launched on September 17, the Xperia phone will announced on September 18. For G2, there is no specific launch date yet but it is coming to India in the last week of September.

Incidentally, all three phones will be available around the same time. Note 3 is expected to be available from September 25 while and Xperia Z1 will hit the market a few days after the announcement on September 17. Consumers will be able to buy G2 immediately after its launch.

Samsung will also launch its Galaxy Gear smartwatch on September 17. Sony, meanwhile, will launch QX10 and QX100 that can be strapped onto a smartphone to turn them into a point-and-shoot camera along with Xperia Z1.

For now the prices of Xperia Z1, Note 3 and G2 are not known. But all of them are expected to cost around Rs 45,000. Sources said that G2 will cost less than Rs 45,000.

All three phones pack in the next generation hardware and have special features.

Galaxy Note 3, which is a successor to Galaxy Note 2, has a 5.7-inch SuperAMOLED screen with FullHD resolution. The Indian version of the Note 3 is likely to be powered by 1.9GHz Exynos Octa processor. It will have 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. The highlight of Note 3 is the multi-functional stylus that will enable a user to access some special software features on the device. It is also going to be the first Samsung phone that doesn't use a back cover made of glossy plastic. Instead, it has a cover made of leather-like material.

The highlight of Xperia Z1, which has 5-inch FullHD screen, is its 20.7 mega pixels primary camera. The camera also features optical image stabilization and is said to rival the camera in Lumia 1020 in terms of performance. Z1 also has a waterproof and dustproof design. It is powered by 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, which is theoretically the fastest mobile processor available at the moment. The device will come with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage.

LG G2 is the successor to Optimus G. It is powered by 2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 processor. It has a 5.2-inch screen with FullHD resolution, a 13 mega pixel camera with optical image stabilization, 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. The highlight of the G2 is its design and screen quality. Unlike other smartphones, G2 has the power and volume buttons placed on the back of the phone. LG claims that this makes using a large screen device like G2 a better experience.

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How robots are reshaping jobs

Technology is driving a big rearrangement in the job market , disturbing their distribution over geographies and sectors.
Pat Pressings is a Rs 1.5 crore component manufacturer near Cochin for the tiller industry. Its director Punnoose Kiran Prince is struggling of late to get employees to do skilled work. It is not that people are always unavailable, but most of them leave after short periods. So, he is now looking for an inexpensive robot to do some jobs, especially welding.

"Job hopping is a big problem with people," says Prince, "while a robot is always available. Its work is also of consistent quality." Prince would buy a robot when it is available at the right price. Across the country, robots are making their way into small companies like Pat Pressings, mostly doing jobs people are not willing to do, like picking up things and putting them elsewhere all day long.

"Many industrial jobs are so repetitive," says Ajay Gopalswamy, CEO of the Bangalore-based DiFACTO Robotics and Automation, a systems integrator, "that people are not willing to do them even if you pay more." It isn't clear, however, what other unskilled jobs are available to them. The robots that make their way into Indian factories, large or small, will substantially increase their productivity. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the market for robots in India will increase from 1,547 units now to 3,500 units by 2015.

Not a large number, but a start in the long journey to automate Indian factories. "The main benefit to having machines replace humans is improved productivity , less danger to humans and, sometimes, better quality work or responses," says Hung LeHong, VP and Gartner Fellow of Gartner, a research and advisory firm. Use of large-scale robotics is only part of the story of automation.

Over the next decade, automation and other related technologies will seep into every industrial sector imaginable. It has already affected manufacturing in the country, especially in the automobile sector, contributing to the reduction of its employment intensity over the last six years. However, automation is not just about physical robots. It is now touching all the major big employment sectors, reducing jobs in some places and creating jobs in others. It raises productivity in all cases, and will also likely create more jobs.

Automation will create problems too. Many economists feel technology is taking the world to an era of jobless growth, but an equal number also think that it will create more jobs in the long run by ploughing the increased wealth back into the economy. "Technology reduces as well as creates jobs, but the two are usually not at the same place or at the same time," says National Research Professor RA Mashelkar.

"So, we need to have smart proactive policies to create a win-win situation from a loss-loss situation." In the IT industry, many low-level jobs are likely to be replaced by intelligent software.In healthcare, automation and decision-support systems are helping doctors augment their knowledge and reduce errors. In education , technology is helping solve the problem of not having enough teachers.

Overall, technology is having a positive impact on all of these sectors. But does it help if 10,000 jobs are shed in Punjab, while Bangalore gains 20,000? Or, if one million jobs are lost in India and three million jobs gained in another country? What about movement across sectors? Or time? As economies—and companies—grow , they tend to become more capital-based rather than labour-based these days.

"Businesses need flexibility," says Crisil chief economist DK Joshi, "and so they become more capital intensive." Would capital-based growth produce enough jobs? As automation gains momentum, it is going to intensify the skills gap that industry is grappling with. A 2012 McKinsey Global Institute report said that India and other developing countries could have 58 million surplus low-skilled workers by 2020. At the same time, India could also have a shortage of 13 million medium-skill workers.

"Automation is likely to intensify this gap," says Anu Madgavkar, MGI senior fellow and India head. India will add 174 million people to the labour market by 2030. Will they have the right skills to remain employed? 

Dwindle
Those aspiring to work in the IT industry would have noticed a drop in campus hiring. Most people would blame the slowdown for the dull job market, but some industry veterans suspect something more fundamental. Certain jobs, very popular in India, may no longer be necessary in such large numbers.

Among these are remote infrastructure management, some testing of code, parts of application maintenance and platform-oriented BPO.

"Technology is responsible for part of the slowdown in hiring," says Sid Pai, Asia-Pacific president of ISG, a technology intelligence and advisory services firm. While the IT industry will continue to be a large employer, jobs in IT will no longer grow at a hectic pace. The industry may no longer hire graduates who are not motivated in reinventing themselves continually. And automation technology is a strong reason why companies pause before hiring.

"Technology is fundamentally getting embedded into organisations and leading to transformations," says Nasscom chairman Som Mittal. "And there is no zero sum game in this." Growth of IT organisations would not be linear, depending on the relentless addition of people. The IT industry has been through this period before. People felt threatened with ERP platforms, but they led to more jobs. Several industry veterans feel the current wave of automation will also have a similar outcome, but not necessarily immediately.

"Ten years ago, nobody had thought of big data, but now it has led to many jobs," says Pankaj Rai, analytics director of Dell International Services. "People are creative and so they will invent something new." However, the jobs lost and those gained could be completely different, and not transferable in most cases. The best example is in the evolution of the automobile.

Car factories these days are very lean, employing fewer and fewer people on the shop floor. But automobile companies are responsible for a large number of jobs through a hierarchy of suppliers who keep expanding . "The car is the centre of the universe," says Venkatesh Prasad, senior technical leader, vehicle design and infotronics, Ford Research and Innovation. The modern car company now hires professionals hardly likely to be associated with the industry some time ago.

"We hire engineers, social scientists, environmental scientists, psychologists and other kinds of people," says Prasad. The car industry also creates a large number of jobs outside, to make the increasingly complex subsystems in the modern car. There seems to evolve rapidly too. Large-scale adoption of electric cars will bring a new paradigm to the industry.

New safety features require a large number of driver assistance technologies. And so on. The employment intensity of manufacturing has been steadily declining. According to Crisil, Indian industry employed 12.2 people to produce Rs 10 lakh of output. In 2011-12 , this had dropped to 7.2 people per Rs 10 lakh. The scope for automation is still very high in India. For example, German company Volkswagen's plant near Pune has an automation of 30% in its body shop. In Germany this number would have been 90%. Over the next decade or two, the auto industry will automate manufacturing still more. The efficiencies gained will plough back into the economy. We just don't always know where or when. Or how. 

Rebalance The first era of financial sector automation was highly visible. They consisted of massive computerisation and opening ATMs, all resisted substantially by the employees. Banks and finance companies continued to automate and hire people, as they expanded in a big way in the country.

The second wave of finance sector automation is not so visible , as they happen inside the servers and networks of the banks, but they could generate high value for the banks. Its impact on jobs is not so clear. Consumer experience is the biggest driver of technology in banks now, as their CIOs frequently talk about optimisation, control and innovation. The central banks insist on automation to make sure the data is correct. Banks use analytics more to understand the customer, and make sure their products work well across all channels. Says Yes Bank CIO Surendra Shetty: "The future is about providing a consistent customer experience across all channels."

Such automation will reduce employment in mature markets, but Indian banks are expanding and need people all the time. "Technology improves productivity, and let the employees bogged down by servicing customers to go on to higher quality work," says Shetty. Which means that routine jobs will reduce slowly while those that require higher knowledge will increase.

"Banks will redeploy some of their resources to tap rural areas through employment of banking correspondents ," says Moorthy Uppaluri, CEO of Randstad India. "Employees will have to reskill and move up the value chain." The finance sector in India is still not as sophisticated as it is in some developed markets. The number of different products is not large. Their IT infrastructure works with a large number of independent systems, each for a different product. Some leading banks have nearly 100 different systems that do not talk to each other.

One of their aims is to reduce this complexity, while offering more products. Banks can provide more sophisticated products by developing the ability to tie external data with internal data. "The expansion of banking as well as the increasing sophistication will result in more jobs," says Vivek Subramanyam, CEO of iCreate Software, a business intelligence solutions provider for banks. So, in the financial sector, reduction in employment could be balanced by other trends.

Similar trends will drive hiring in some other sectors like pharma or life sciences, especially in the R&D space. Automation is not quite the driver here, but it does play a part. Traditional drug-based therapies are now being replaced by genomics, bioengineering and, one day, therapies based on stem cells. As in finance, there could be a balancing out here. Some of these technologies use automation, but people work alongside the machines. 

Flourish
If you want to see the future of healthcare, Narayana Health City in Bangalore is a nice place to begin. Its founder and thoracic surgeon Devi Shetty is working hard to change the healthcare system, as we know it, improving access while raising quality standards. One of his prime exhibits now is a simulator under development for training surgical nurses. "The success of surgeries would depend on the care that nurses take," says Shetty.

"But there is no satisfactory way now to train them well." Shetty cites the airline industry, which adopted simulators to train pilots and improved safety standards significantly. His simulator trains nurses to put a central line, a wire that goes through an artery into the heart. It is a delicate job, requiring patience and skill, and teaching it is hard. A trainee nurse gets only one or two opportunities a day to practise in a hospital. Shetty's simulator lets nurses practice as much as they want, and not on patients.

It would be a revolution when in the market. When the healthcare system expands rapidly in the country, nurses would perform a critical role in its delivery . The arrival of technologies like the simulator would help hospitals to train nurses rapidly and increase their number exponentially. As hospitals expand into rural areas and healthcare into homes, a different set of professionals—call them augmented nurses— could become mediators between the doctor and the patient.

In Shetty's view, hospitals will only look at critical care. Everything else will spread out into a new set of institutions and professionals. Automation is the method through which this healthcare expansion will work, and experts see it creating many jobs. "Healthcare automation will often need more people," says Srivatsan Aparajithan, CEO of Vidal Health, a health management and services firm.

Healthcare is among the industries where robots and automated software will work along with the professionals rather than replace them. Education is another . This $43 billion private industry is also in an expansion mode in India, as technology is improving education quality and access. It is creating a large number of jobs as well. "Hundred percent e-learning will not work in India," says Poornima Shenoy, founder- CEO of Latitude, a skills training company. Healthcare and education are moving rapidly into the era of personal management. People with devices at homes can monitor their health, and mobile connectivity to hospitals will ensure advice on tap.

Learning continues right through one's career, through e-learning and hands-on training. Both industries are driven by automation technologies working alongside with people, creating enormous opportunities. Says LeHong of Gartner: "Human versus machine is not a binary decision, and there are times when machines working alongside humans is a better choice. A new generation of robots is being built to purposely work alongside humans."

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Tablet shipments to beat PCs‘ by 2015: IDC

The shipment of tablets will overtake those of PCs in annually by 2015, according to a new report by market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

NEW DELHI: The shipment of tablets will overtake those of PCs in annually by 2015, according to a new report by market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC). Though the shipments of PCs are still expected to be greater than tablet shipments for the full year, IDC forecasts the tablet shipments will surpass total PC shipments on an annual basis by the end of 2015.

The report further states that the worldwide smart connected device space will continue to surge, with overall shipments surpassing 2 billion units by the end of 2015 with a market value of $735.1 billion. As per the IDC report, the worldwide smart connected device market --- comprising PCs, tablets and smartphones --- is forecasted to grow 27.8% year-on-year in 2013, slightly lower than the 30.3% growth in 2012.

The growth will be driven by tablet and smartphone shipments. The PC sales outlook has been lowered by 10% for 2013. Smartphones will continue to ship in high volumes, surpassing 1.4 billion units in 2015 and accounting for 69% of all smart connected device shipments worldwide.

In terms of device mix, total PC shipments accounted for 28.7% of the smart connected device market in 2012 while tablets accounted for 11.8% and smartphones for 59.5%. By 2017, total PCs are expected to drop to 13%, while tablets and smartphones will contribute 16.5% and 70.5% respectively to the overall market. The shift in demand from the more expensive PC category to more reasonably priced smartphones and tablets will drive the average selling price ( ASP) for the collective market from $462 in 2012 to $323 in 2017.

In terms of shipment value, the worldwide smart connected devices market will again exhibit double-digit year-on-year growth of 10.6% in 2013, but this growth will gradually slow to just 3.1% in 2017. Worldwide smart connected device value is expected to be $622.4 billion in 2013, of which $423.1 billion will come from the sub-$350 smartphone and sub-$350 tablet segments collectively.

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Vodafone Germany servers hacked, data of 2m stolen

FRANKFURT: A hacker has gained access to one of Vodafone Germany's servers and has stolen the personal data of about 2 million customers, the company said on Thursday.

The hacker had access to customers' names, addresses and bank account numbers, the group said, adding the person did not get any passwords, security numbers or connection data.

Vodafone said it was not possible that the data was of any use to the hacker. "It is hardly possible to use the data to get directly access to the bank accounts of those affected," Vodafone said in a statement.

Privacy and personal data are sensitive issues in Germany due partly to a history of heavy surveillance of citizens in the former communist East and under Hitler's Nazis.

Vodafone warned its customers that with potential so-called "phishing" attacks or fake e-mails criminals would try to get more information about passwords and credit cards.

It said it was working with police to investigate the matter and had sealed the ports the hacker had used to get access to its servers.

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Touch ID: Apple brings biometrics into mainstream

Although Apple's executives said at Tuesday's launch that its Touch ID technology embedded into the iPhone 5S' home button would only provide fingerprint access to the phone and its own online stores.

SINGAPORE/SAN FRANCISCO: By adding afingerprint scanner to its newest mobile phone,Apple is offering a tantalizing glimpse of a future where your favorite gadget might become a biometric pass to the workplace, mobile commerce or real-world shopping and events.

Although Apple's executives said at Tuesday's launch that its Touch ID technology embedded into the iPhone 5S' home button would only provide fingerprint access to the phone and its own online stores, analysts said Apple's embrace of such technology, called biometrics, would be key to wider adoption.

"It really propels biometrics into the mainstream," said specialist Alan Goode, the UK-based managing director of research consultancy Goode Intelligence.

Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, hinted of its future in a video presentation at the launch.

"Touch ID defines the next step of how you use your iPhone," he said, "making something as important as security so effortless and so simple."

Passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) have long been the mainstay of access to devices, bank accounts and online services, despite their poor record. Many passwords can easily be guessed, while others can be hacked by brute-force attacks - essentially a computer program running through all possible permutations.

They also involve one too many steps for lots of users: Apple said that half of smartphone users don't bother to password-protect their devices.

Hence the appeal of biometrics, which take something unique to the individual - a fingerprint, an iris, voice or facial features - as authentication.

Comfort for commerce
Apple's move may not have an immediate impact beyond improving the way users unlock their devices and interact with Apple services like iTunes and its App Store.

But that is itself a significant step. Apple has more than 500 million iTunes accounts. Anything that increases security and removes steps in the payment process is bound to boost online purchases.

It will also raise the comfort levels of companies supplying the content to a mobile commerce sector expected to reach $40 billion next year in the United States alone, according to Euromonitor estimates.

Users afraid of using their mobile device to make purchases online or in the real world because they fear it will be stolen or their password seen may feel liberated using a fingerprint, said Michael Chasen, CEO of SocialRadar, which is building location-based mobile applications for social networking.

For mobile commerce, he said, that could "be the missing piece".

Beyond the web, Apple could combine the Touch ID with its existing "Passbook" app that stores coupons, tickets to events and boarding passes on an iPhone and allow event organizers and airline companies to validate those documents, said Sebastien Taveau, chief technology officer at California-based Validity Sensors, which makes sensors for other manufacturers.

"Apple wants to make deals with music and entertainment companies with very strong opinions on digital rights management," Taveau said. The fingerprint scanner, when used in transactions with these companies, could "reassure all these industries".

Biometric security should also appeal to enterprises nervous about allowing the personal devices of employees on the office network, analysts and industry insiders said.

"If this has been implemented right, every enterprise that enforces a password or PIN lock on the device will begin using the fingerprint sensor instead," said Song Chuang, Singapore-based research director at Gartner.

Apple is not the first to try to make biometrics work for the consumer.

Fingerprint scanners have already found their way into laptops, external hard-drives and electronic wallets. Companies like Motorola Mobility Holdings, Fujitsu and Pantech have incorporated fingerprint scanners into their mobile phones.

But none has really taken off.

Partly, that's because of cost and partly because there's been little in the way of an ecosystem to build support for the products.

"Biometrics have been historically viewed as a more expensive 'nice to have' component, rather than a 'must have'," said Bill Morelli, an analyst at IHS.

Also, fingerprint scanners have tended to make things harder rather than easier for users.

Chuang at Gartner said it could take users up to six swipes for a sensor to 'learn' a user's fingerprint. "This is not a great user experience," he said.

All things, say some, that Apple was put on this earth to fix. Ben Thompson, a Taipei-based industry observer who writes a blog at stratechery.com, said Apple was focusing on the apparently trivial problem of entering a password - but one that irked users dozens of times a day.

"It's classic Apple to expend tremendous energy on simplifying a small irritation, even if it's not a classic feature list item."

Badly kept secret boosts industry
The badly kept secret of Apple's biometric plans had already given the industry a boost long before Tuesday. The company has been filing patents on biometric security since at least 2009.

"Apple has been working on it for more than two years and they have extremely competent engineers," said Validity's Taveau.

Apple reached out two to three years ago to Microlatch, an Australian company, to license and test its peripheral fingerprint sensors. Apple asked it to build a Bluetooth connection to the phone and accompanying software, Microlatch managing director and founder Chris Burke said, so Apple could gauge user reactions and habits, particularly in e-commerce strongholds like China.

"In their roadmap it was clear there would be fingerprint scans, so they'd plot their course, rather than just trying something," Burke said in a phone interview.

Last year Apple also paid about $350 million for AuthenTec, a key player in fingerprint sensors and until its purchase a supplier to Samsung Electronics, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo Group and Fujitsu.

Apple's moves have reawakened interest in the space.

Swedish biometric component maker Fingerprint Cards AB, for example, has seen its share price rise 1,400 percent in the past year. The company predicts the industry will ship up to 100 million consumer electronic devices embedded with fingerprint scanners this year, rising to more than 1 billion in 2015 as biometrics finds its way into TV remotes, gaming consoles and cameras.

Downside of nice, not necessary
There are downsides to fingerprint technology. It is not as accurate as companies touting its benefits make it sound, and PINs and passwords can be reset or changed if someone steals them.

"Fingerprint recognition is not perfect," said Geppy Parziale, biometrics expert and CEO of Invasivecode, a firm that develops applications for Apple's mobile devices. Then there's the problem of the fingerprints themselves: acquiring a large enough set of them to test the accuracy of such devices is complicated by privacy and legal issues, Parziale said.

But if anyone can bring this technology into the mainstream, experts say, it's Apple. It has, for example, embedded the scanner into the iPhone's home button, while other mobile devices usually have it on the back, making it awkward for the user and increasing the number of failed attempts.

Samsung and fellow South Korean electronics manufacturer LG Electronics have had problems incorporating the technology into finished products.

LG's head of domestic marketing, Ma Chang-Min, last month said the company had abandoned efforts to include a fingerprint sensor to the back cover of its flagship G2 smartphone "as we need more work to improve reliability and usability".

That gives Apple a headstart. It can also build the sensing and security deep into its operating system and the A7 mobile chip which Apple itself designed, putting it ahead of rivals such like Google, which develops the Android mobile OS and licenses it to manufacturers like Samsung, said Taipei-based KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

But its edge may not last.

Microsoft, for one, is building fingerprint recognition into the latest update of its Windows operating system and, said Taveau of Validity Sensors, "it is fair to assume that the Android community won't be long to react".

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Dell buyout: Founder likely to get shareholder nod

Michael Dell is expected to clinch shareholder approval for his $25 billion offer to buy and take Dell private on Thursday.

AUSTIN, TEXAS: Michael Dell is expected to clinch shareholder approval for his $25 billion offer to buy and take Dell private on Thursday, ending months of conflict with the company's largest investors and removing uncertainty that has clouded the world's No. 3 PC maker.

Dell, who founded the company from a college dorm-room in 1984, fought for months to convince skeptical investors his offer was the best option. This week, he gained the upper hand after one of his staunchest opponents, activist investor Carl Icahn, bowed out of the conflict because he said it was "impossible to win."

Shareholders begin casting their votes on Thursday morning in Austin, Texas, and if the billionaire and his partner, Silver Lake, secure shareholders' okay at the special meeting as is widely expected, the pace of transformation should quicken.

It may also assuage customers who have grown wary of the company's direction during a very public battle that pits major Wall Street players Icahn, Southeastern Asset Management and T Rowe Price against the CEO.

"Once the deal is consummated, they can move on and close some of the large infrastructure deals they've been working on. I do think there's been a bit of a pause," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross.

Dell reported a 72% slide in quarterly earnings last month, reflecting price cuts intended to soothe nervous customers and spearhead a foray into the enterprise market.

Michael Dell has argued that revamping his company into a provider of enterprise computing services in the mold of IBM is a complex undertaking best performed outside of the spotlight of public markets.

It remains to be seen if Dell can build its storage, networking and software portfolios to vie with Hewlett Packard and others. But with the PC market expected to shrink again in 2013, investors say the company has little choice.

Some analysts think it may be too late, since a large swathe of the corporate market has been locked up by IBM and HP.

Gutted
Dell in recent years has become one of the more prominent victims of PC market erosion from mobile devices, such as Apple's iPad.

Its fortunes remain closely tied to sales of the venerable personal computer, despite $13 billion in acquisitions since 2008 to expand into everything from software to networking. PC sales, which have been shrinking for the last three years, still yield half of its revenue.

Global PC sales are expected to fall 7% this year and 4.5% next year, according to analysts at CLSA. Dell's own revenue is projected to shrink every year through 2016, according to Boston Consulting Group, the firm hired by Dell's board to review the buyout offer.

A vote on the buyout had been postponed three times as Michael Dell and the company's board scrambled to garner enough votes in favour. But on August 2, Michael Dell raised his offer price, tacked on a special-dividend sweetener, and got the board to change voting rules so that abstentions no longer count against him - turning the tide in the CEO's favour.

A change in the record date by more than two months was also seen as enfranchising so-called arbitrage investors - hedge funds that bought Dell stock more recently to earn a few cents per share, and would thus be more likely support the buyout.

The current agreement before shareholders includes a 13 cent special dividend on top of a 10-cent increase in the sale price to $13.75 a share.

Dell's stock ended flat at $13.85 on Wednesday.

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What celebs tweeted on iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C launch

Apple unveiled its latest range of iPhones on Tuesday and the celebrities were quick to react about the new phones on Twitter.

WASHINGTON: Apple has unveiled its latest range of iPhones and celebrities were quick to react about the new phones on Twitter.

American actor and director Zach Braff tweeted that the fingerprints are the only thing the NSA doesn't have yet, commenting on the iPhone 5S's biometric scanning feature, which is aimed at providing better security.

According to the US Magazine, most celebrities talked about the fingerprint sensor feature, with comparing it to the US's NSA surveillance programmes while others doubting the very need of having such a technology just to unlock the phone and use a certain programme.

Wil Wheaton, of the Star Trek fame, posted that if a user wouldn't willingly give fingerprints to the state without cause, he probably don't want the new iPhone, referring to the US's alleged surveillance programmes.

American actor and director Jon Cryer tweeted that having the fingerprint sensor to just unlocking the phone and use iTunes is just stupid.

Other celebrities who welcomed the latest iPhones included Sean Lowe whose post read as, "Laugh now but my new iPhone necklace is going to make me millions," apparently referring to the gold coloured model.

Former American TV personality, Spencer Pratt hoped that the new iOS 7 processor comes with new emoji icons.

Meanwhile, model-actress Molly Sims said that she cannot wait until the fall when she can download the real deal on her own iPhone without fear of total phone apocalypse.

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Tech Mahindra bags outsourcing deal from Volvo

MUMBAI: IT firm Tech Mahindra said it won a contract from Sweden's Volvo Car Corporationfor application maintenance and development. 

No financial details were disclosed. According to sources, the three-year deal is worth over $40 million. 

The company will develop, implement and maintain a range of applications for Volvo Cars to help increase efficiency and reduce costs, Tech Mahindra said in a statement. 

Services will be provided across multiple domains, including manufacturing, product development, marketing and sales and reporting, starting this month, it added. 

"We see this contract as an opportunity to increase our contribution to Volvo Cars and further develop our business in the region. Our plans include proactive investment and recruitment from both local universities and the local business domain pool," Tech Mahindra Head-Europe Vikram Nair said.

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KPIT Cummins announces new identity, logo

Pune-based IT consulting and product engineering company KPIT Cummins Infosystems has announced a new corporate identity and logo. The company has changed its name to 'KPIT Technologies Limited' effective 25th July 2013 as part of a rebranding exercise. 

Commenting on the new brand identity, Ravi Pandit, Chairman & Group CEO, KPIT said, "The new name and logo mirror the progression of KPIT into a leading creator and provider of strong technology solutions. It is ready to take on future challenges and move faster toward achieving its goal of reaching the milestone of $1bn in revenue by 2017." 

He further added, "The new brand identity highlights our current engagements as strategic partners to our customers, the way we create and deliver innovative solutions and technologies through Value HarvestingSM, thereby generating the greatest possible business value for our customers. We are prepared for our new journey with renewed passion and focus to achieve our goals." 

The inclusion of the word 'Technologies' in its name is a nod to its stated mission to be at the forefront of technologies and processes to help global corporations become efficient, integrated and innovative enterprises.

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Facebook‘s facial recognition feature under FTC scanner

US officials will examine changes to Facebook's privacy policy to determine whether they violate a 2011 agreement with federal regulators, a Federal Trade Commission spokesman confirmed after certain changes drew fire from privacy advocates. 

Much of the criticism has focused on a proposed "Tag Suggest" feature that would use facial recognition technology to match faces in photos with public profile features, part of a broad set of privacy changes the social networking giant announced on August 29. 

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan said regulators would study the changes as part of the government's oversight of Facebook's privacy practices, which began in 2011 after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for privacy missteps and pledged to obtain users' permission before sharing their personal data. 

"As in all cases, we're monitoring compliance with the order and part of that involves interacting with Facebook," Kaplan said. 

He added that the commission had no reason to believe that the company had violated its 2011 agreement. 

Facebook posted an update to its data use policies on the company website on August 29 to explain how users' personal information is used by advertisers and third-party applications. (r.reuters.com/myq92v) 

The new policy proposal came days after the company finalized a $20 million class-action settlement related to how Facebook displayed its users' "likes" and pictures in its ads products. 

Facebook said in a statement on Wednesday that it was in full compliance with the FTC and that its new policy did not grant the company expanded privileges in how it used personal data.

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