Digital technology can push $20 billion sales opportunity: Nielson report

Enhancement of technologies is creating opportunities of incremental revenue for companies and by leveraging digital technology like Internet, mobile, tablets and apps can get sales opportunities worth $20 billion, a report has said.

"Disrupting established brand behaviours by leveraging digital more often, using promotions and providing consumers with good experience can provide a $20 billion sales opportunity," says the report by said market insights and information provider Nielsen.

According to Nielsen, purchases done by Indian consumers are more influenced by factors in its direct control.

"In the FMCG space alone, 80 per cent of shoppers will buy a different item than originally planned. Today's shoppers are empowered by choice and refine their decisions based on marketplace disruptions,"said Nielsen India Executive Director Adrian Terron.

The report further said that in the analysis it was found that more than half of the shoppers of the five segments had accessed Internet as part pf their pre-purchase, decision making process.

The sector are -- FMCG, movie, travel, auto and loans. Terron further added that still the share of the e-tailing in the retain sector is very low and at nascent stage but "its opportunity is high and the gender gap is closing".

The reports further said that using promotions can also influence a sale of $10 billion.

The survey has found that for FMCG products, promotions influenced 34 per cent of shoppers to make a bigger purchase than planned.

Providing consumers with a good experience can turn plans into purchases, it further added.

"A good deal can prompt consumers to buy more, buy earlier and buy different than otherwise intended," said Terron.

However, he added that the promotions need to be used tactically and strategically to cause disruption.

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All about the Google machines

If you're out shopping for a computer, depending on your needs, you can pick a desktop PC, a notebook, a netbook, or even a tablet. Now, as if to complicate things further, you will also find something known as a Chromebook - a lightweight, portable device that's been launched by Google and its hardware partners.

So what is a Chromebook?

A Chromebook is like a netbook. It lacks an optical disc drive and is designed for use on the internet. In some ways, it's also like a tablet and comes with its own web store that carries over 30,000 apps. The biggest difference is its operating system. Instead of Windows, Chromebooks are powered by the Chrome OS that has been developed by the engineers at Google.

Chrome OS? What's that?

The Chrome OS can be described as the Chrome web browser on steroids. You can use it to browse the internet, as well as run software applications inside it. Like all modern operating systems, this OS is designed to download software updates in the background, so the machine is always up-to-date. In effect, a user can unbox a new Chromebook, log in to the system using their Google ID, and start using it right away.

What can you do with a Chromebook?

If you spend all your computer time on the internet, then the Chromebook will work for you. The device relies on cloud-based services - that is, apps on the internet - for most common computing tasks. This means, you can access all your social networks and surf the web, use Google Drive and Docs for word processing, online photo tools like Sumo Paint and Pixlr Editor for image editing, and YouTube for videos. You can carry out video chats with Google Hangouts, as well as play games such as Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, even a 3D first-person shooter like Quake that's customised for Chrome.

When it comes to storage, the Chromebook is equipped with a 16GB, or a 32GB solid state drive (SSD) because it relies heavily on virtual storage available on Google Drive. Of course, you can use other cloud-based storage services like Dropbox.

Ah yes, you can also create multiple profiles for different users on a single device.

What can't you do with it?

You can't use software that runs on the Windows platform. This means no alternative web browser like Firefox; no VLC Player, WinRAR, Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. The Chromebook is not suitable for video encoding. It also doesn't work well if you are trying to create complex sales charts, and it's not the right choice if you want to play 3D games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Given that it comes with low internal storage, a Chromebook cannot store hundreds of videos. And you obviously can't play DVDs. But if you have video files in a pen drive or external hard disk, you can play them using its built-in video player. Still, support for file formats is limited. Full HD 1080p videos in MP4 play well. But depending on resolution, MKV, FLV and WMV files may not run. Also, support for smartphones and cameras is limited and you may not be able to copy files between some of your devices and this machine.

Does it require a 24x7 internet connection to work?

No. A Chromebook can work without an internet connection. You can access your mailbox offline, and create documents using Google Drive. You can use offline apps and even play some games. In fact, there are several software that have been designed to work in offline mode with the Chrome OS. That said, without an internet connection, this device has limited utility.

Bottomline

If you are looking for a laptop that will be mostly used for web browsing, cloud apps, and social networking, then a Chromebook is a decent buy. Compared to similarlypriced laptops, these machines offer better build quality and quicker boot times. On the other hand, if you need to run a lot of intensive software, want to watch movies, or play 3D games, pick a Windows laptop.

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Smartphone Sales Accounted for 55 per cent of Overall Mobile Phone Sales in Third Quarter of 2013: Gartner

More and more end users are opting for smartphones when they go out to buy a mobile phone. The sales of smartphones accounted for 55 per cent of overall mobile phone sales in the third quarter on 2013, according to Gartner.

Worldwide smartphone sales to end users reached 250.2 million units, up 45.8 percent from the third quarter of 2012. Asia/Pacific led the growth in both markets - the smartphone segment with 77.3 percent increase and the mobile phone segment with 11.9 percent growth.

“Sales of feature phones continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much closer to the ASP affordable smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“In markets such as China and Latin America, demand for feature phones fell significantly as users rushed to replace their old models with smartphones,” he added.

Gartner analysts said global mobile phone sales are on pace to reach 1.81 billion units in 2013, a 3.4 percent increase from 2012.

Gartner analysts said global mobile phone sales are on pace to reach 1.81 billion units in 2013, a 3.4 percent increase from 2012.

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Pros and Cons of using Linux

Just like any operating system, Linux has its pros and cons. You've heard the pros before: It's free, it's super customizable, and it helps you learn a lot more about how your computer works. There are also a ton of distros, which means you can find the perfect one for you. While some have gotten a lot easier to use in the past few years, none are foolproof. I used Linux as my primary OS on and off for a year or so, and here are some of the things I found.

Linux has some great apps, but is missing quite a few
Linux's app situation is interesting. If you're worried about not having a good image editing program, photo library, or music player, you might be surprised-Linux has some pretty great offerings (just check out our Linux App Directory if you don't believe me). Apps like digiKam compete with professional-level apps on other operating systems, and you have a lot of choices in some categories.

However, if you use services like Evernote, Wunderlist, or Spotify, you're going to have a little more trouble. Wunderlist and Spotify do have Linux versions available, but they're often a step or two behind their Windows and Mac bretheren. Evernote has no official Linux client, and the third-party client Everpad isn't really very good. If you can rely on webapps for most of your services or are willing to switch to a Linux-native app, you'll be golden-but if you really like how Evernote works, you're going to be really frustrated and disappointed with Linux's offerings.

Linux can take a lot of initial setup, especially for certain hardware
Installing Linux is pretty easy these days, but getting everything "set up" the way you like it can take a little more work, depending on your hardware, your distro, and your preferences. For example, I have a five button mouse, but by default, only the left- and right-click buttons work out of the box. For the rest, I have to install a command line program, edit a config file to map the buttons to a function that I want, and set that program to run on startup-and all that takes a little trial and error to get working properly. On Windows, it comes with software that helps me do all this in a few minutes. I've experienced similar things with video drivers, laptop touchpads, secondary hard drives, and other specialized needs that don't work out of the box.

Again, a lot of this depends on your hardware and preferences-some people may be good to go on day one, but others may spend a week just getting things working the way they want them. And the pickier you are, the more trouble you're going to have. Linux may have more customization options than other operating systems, but they aren't always easy.

Linux is less polished than more professional, established operating systems
Even the most well put-together distros have some bugs and annoyances, and in my experience, they were far more numerous than Windows or OS X. Some are fixable by the user, but will add up to even more time just "getting things working." Heck, in my 30 days of using Linux Mint earlier this year, I experienced these known and documented annoyances:

Mouse sensitivity was way too fast, even at its lowest setting

*The keyboard shortcut configuration window was broken

*I kept getting an "Unable to Mount Floppy Disk" error, when there was no floppy drive in my machine

*The sound output setting reset itself every time I rebooted, a bug that has existed since 2011

*The screen dims itself even when playing a video

Again, some of these are fixable, and some are bugs that may have already gotten fixed down the line-but for a distro that is supposed to be polished and beginner-friendly, it certainly caused a lot of headaches for me.

None of this is to say Linux is bad or that you shouldn't try it. As we've said many times, Linux has a lot of advantages-you may just need to put in a little extra work to get things up and running properly. Which apps, bugs, and frustrations you run into depend completely on your specific setup, and some may be much better off than others. But after a year or so of Linux use and multiple distros, this has been my experience.

In the end, Linux is great for a lot of things, even if you don't use it as your main OS. It's perfect for setting up a home theater PC without buying Windows, or reviving a super old machine. But if you want to really dig deeply and use it as your main operating system, just know that things are going to be a little different than Windows or OS X. For some, it's well worth the effort, but others may find that it's too much work for little payoff. The only way you can know is to try it out for yourself.

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Do you need a smartphone with 1080p display?

If 1080p in a phone sounds like a lot, that's because it is. When the first iPhone with a "retina display" came out, it packed a 3.5" screen with a resolution of 960x640, giving it 326 pixelsper inch (or ppi). Notably, when Apple increased the physical size of the iPhone to 4", it also increased the resolution to 1136x640 which is still 326ppi. In most cases, 300ppi or so exceeds what the human eye is able to distinguish at a normal viewing distance (which is what Apple's "Retina" is supposed to refer to).

A 1080p phone, on the other hand, has an insane amount of pixels in comparison. In a 5" phone, a display of 1920x1080 has a whopping density of 440ppi. If you go down to, say a 4.7" phone like the HTC One, you reach 468ppi. That's a resolution that's about 50% higher than what most human eyes can readily distinguish under normal usage. You can probably see pixels if you squint really close, but is there any real benefit to going up this high?

High resolution displays use more battery power
It's impossible to add more pixels to a device without needing power to run them. Some types of panels like AMOLED only light up pixels as they're needed, which means you can conserve some power by using darker themes, but LCD displays will light them all up no matter what, which requires more juice. Not only to physically turn them on, but it also requires battery power to run the processor harder to account for the added complexity (which we'll come back to in a bit).

Just how much extra power does it take? Well, when Apple released the 3rd generation iPad with "retina" (here defined as 264ppi), it came with a whopping 11,666 mAh battery, which was 70% larger than the battery in the previous generation. However, it still only promised the same 10 hours of use. Why? Well, it would be oversimplifying to say it's solely because of the new display, but it's also correct to say that doubling the ppi over the previous tablet (132ppi for the iPad 2) would require a significant increase in power consumption.

You can somewhat see this reflected in Android phones as well. While Android phones vary wildly in battery size, the ones that last the longest are also typically the ones with the biggest batteries. LaptopMag rated the LG G2 as the Android phone with the best battery life around. It also carries a 3,000 mAh battery. Comparatively, the Moto X has a 720p display with 2,200 mAh battery. Both phones will run a full day (and the G2 can actually run longer than that), but larger batteries don't make phones more efficient. They're more akin to Hummers with large tanks than a fuel-efficient hybrid.

High resolution displays use more processing power
While powering all those pixels will have a direct effect on battery life, they'll have to go through some processing power on the way. How much is difficult to gauge since there are so many factors that affect performance and efficiency in software. However, as one independent game developer explained to us, increasing the number of pixels in a display will always tax the GPU more:

These higher res screens tax fragment shaders (which do the processing for each pixel) on the GPU more. That means you get worse battery life for the same GPU/battery because for all applications more pixels need to be processed. It also means that in anything that actually gets near the limits of the hardware you have (primarily games), you're going to hit those limits much more quickly. Especially because, in games, the fragment shaders are, the vast majority of the time, going to be the primary bottleneck.

In most cases, we accept this trade-off because things look nicer. However, since the human eye can't tell much of a difference between a 300+ppi display and a 400+ppi display, the extra processing power needed to run those pixels is mostly wasted. Ironically, having a higher resolution display can result in worse-looking graphics purely because the GPU is wasting time on rendering more raw pixels (that you probably can't see), instead of allowing developers to use those resources on adding more elements or details (like the advanced particle systems, lighting effects, and texture mapping you see in advanced AAA games).

High resolution displays are Good for CJK characters
There are, however, a few benefits to having a high resolution display-like CJK characters. If you haven't heard of CJK characters, then this benefit doesn't apply to you. CJK stands for Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters. Unlike the Latin-based alphabet that consists of a small collection of a couple dozen or so distinct symbols that create words based on combinations, CJK symbols can be distinct words on their own and potentially bear striking similarities to different words.

The question of whether or not super high-resolution displays actually aid in reading CJK characters is, as with anything, highly subjective. However, text is one of the first things to become illegible at low-resolutions and CJK characters are considerably more complex than Latin ones.

Keep in mind that, while it's true in an overwhelming majority of cases that a ppi exceeding 300 is overkill, it depends heavily on how good your eyesight is and how far away you view your device. You probably don't normally look at your phone three inches away from your face, but if you do, 300ppi might not be enough.

If you have a need to read text using CJK characters, your best bet is to just look at a phone with a 1080p display yourself, hold it the way you normally hold your phone, and see how it feels for you. However, if you stick with latin-based characters, it's equally likely that trying to distinguish between two screens will just result in your brain playing tricks on you.

Ultimately, your phone choice is up to you and none of them are particularly bad. However, the higher up the ppi in phones get, the more questionable the benefit is. Even if you feel a tangible benefit to a 1080p display in a 5" phone, it won't stop there. LG, for example, recently showed off a 5.5" display with a mind-boggling 538ppi. Arguments about viewing distances, special characters, and "retina" definitions aside, there's an upper limit for phone displays and we're straddling that line now. Chances are for most consumers, worrying about battery life and performance should be a much higher priority.

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5 hot Google Chrome apps

Even without a Chromebook , you can still try out some fantastic web apps if you have Google Chrome installed on your machine. Whoever said a browser is only good for surfing the web, didn't hear of the Chrome Web Store... Head to google.com/chrome to download and set up the Chrome browser. Once installed, visit the Chrome Web Store at chrome.google.com/webstore and search the app (by the name in bold). Click, and download.

Quake The game's premise is simple: you're armed with some really big guns, and you have to run like crazy in a dungeon-like setting, pulverizing monsters before they pulverize you. Strictly Darwinian - it's all about the 'survival of the fittest.' If you haven't played Quake yet, in Chrome, you can. Load times are minimal, there's a lot of action, and it can be played offline. It even includes support for a gamepad, freeing you from the keyboard. Run!

Until AM
Itching to scratch some vinyl? Download Until AM and turn Chrome into a DJ console. The dashboard lets you load tracks on its virtual turntables from SoundCloud and your Google Drive account. You can also use Until AM offline, adding songs from your PC. Cross-fade from one track into the next, tweak the tempo, change the pitch, and create your own groove. Mix it, beat master!

piZap Photo Editor piZap Photo Editor is your digital fairness cream, teeth whitener and shine shampoo. This photo 'rejuvenator' is a simple, but useful tool that lets you create some awesome Facebook cover photos and Twitter header cover shots. You can upload pictures or import from Picasa, Instagram , Facebook and Flickr. Add stickers, paint over the photo, or create a meme. The edited image can be downloaded or shared directly on your social networks.

Little Alchemy So you're not the great Wizard Merlin, but you can still put your powers to the test with Little Alchemy. You start with the basics of nature - fire, water, air, earth - and you are entrusted with the job of conjuring up to as many as 430 new elements. At first, it's really simple: fire and water give you steam; water and earth creates mud, but as you proceed your true 'metal' will be tested. Take help from the random hints and click on objects to drill down to their original composition. In the end, there's just one question. Can you create gold?

365Scores If you're a 'born spectator', with 365Scores, you can keep tabs on your favourite sport - football, tennis, basketball, volleyball and hockey - while you are at work, or stalking somebody's timeline. It's your go-to app for team standings, news and videos, and also a "Who will win" polling section that displays what fellow users think about your team's chances. You can catch up on highlights and commentary in the video section, dive into a game result for a quick stat check or click on "All Scores" to skim through results.

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