Intel‘s Broadwell chip delayed

Intel's third-quarter results modestly beat expectations, but its current-quarter revenue outlook fell short and it warned that production of its upcoming Broadwell processors was delayed. 

The world's top chipmaker is betting that its current Haswell PC processor with improved battery life will boost sales for the rest of 2013, beyond the typically strong third quarter when PC manufacturers buy chips in anticipation of holiday demand. 

But preparations for the Broadwell chip, which will succeed Haswell, have fallen behind projections by about three months due to technical setbacks, Brian Krzanich told analysts on a conference call following Intel's quarterly report on Tuesday. 

He said production of the Broadwell chips, based on the 14 nanometer technology that is ahead of rivals' technology, will not begin until the first quarter. 

"We and our (manufacturing) partners have a strong desire to get Broadwell to the market," Krzanich said. "This is a small blip in the schedule." 

Chief financial officer Stacy Smith said the delay would not affect gross margins in the fourth quarter or impact the competitiveness of Intel's product lineup. 

"We're not happy with the one-quarter push but it does point to how difficult these problems are to solve," he told Reuters. 

Much of Intel's strength has historically come from its chip manufacturing technology, which is the most advanced in the world and is ahead of rivals by around two years. 

Broadwell's delay should have little impact on Intel's sales, said FBR analyst Chris Rolland, although he added that investors were sensitive to any hint of technology trouble at the chipmaker. 

"For these guys, their competitive advantage is based on manufacturing. It's certainly a small setback. You don't want to screw with timetables, and you don't want to screw with Moore's law," Rolland said. 

With consumers increasingly favoring tablets and smartphones, Intel is wrestling with a slowdown in its core PC market while trying to make inroads in low-power mobile devices. 

Adapting to the slow PC industry, Intel also trimmed its 2013 capital expenditure target to $10.8 billion, plus or minus $300 million, from $11 billion, plus or minus $500 million. 

Since taking the helm in May, Krzanich has pushed to improve Intel's offering of chips for mobile devices. It recently announced a lineup of ultra-small chips for wearable devices, which are growing more popular. 

Intel dominates the PC industry but it was slow to adapt its chips for low-power mobile gadgets like smartphones and tablets. 

Krzanich has promised Intel's new Bay Trail mobile chip would find its way into a slew of tablets, but it is still unclear how much progress is being made and how much those mobile chips, which sell for less than Intel's latest PC chips, may affect its gross margins. 

Some analysts believe the PC industry's troubles are already baked into the price of Intel's stock, which has risen about 14 percent in 2013, less than the Standard & Poor's 500's increase of 20 percent. 

Intel shares trade at 12 times expected earnings, only slightly less than rival Qualcomm Inc's at 14 times earnings. 

The company said its gross margin in the third quarter was 62.4%, and it forecast 61% for the fourth quarter. Analysts had expected 60.92% for the third quarter and 60.98% for the fourth quarter. 

Intel posted net earnings of $2.95 billion, or 58 cents a share, compared to $2.97 billion, or 58 cents share, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts had expected earnings per share of 53 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. 

Revenue was $13.48 billion, barely changed from $13.46 billion in the year-ago quarter. Intel forecast revenue of $13.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million for the current fourth quarter. 

Analysts had expected $13.463 billion in revenue for the third quarter and $14.004 billion for the fourth quarter. 

Shares of Intel were down 2.31% in extended trade after closing down 0.26% at $23.39 on Nasdaq.

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iPhone 5S to debut at Rs 54,000; 5C @ Rs 42,000

Leading telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications will start selling Apple's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C smartphones from November 1. 

Airtel has started pre-bookings for the latest iPhones which saw record sales in the first three days of launch in the US market. 

"Interested customers can visit select Airtel Retail Store for pre-registration," Airtel said in a statement. 

RCom said it will offer the iPhones "to customers beginning on November 1, 2013." 

iPhone 5C would be available at price starting from about Rs 42,000 and iPhone 5S at Rs 54,000, market sources said. 

A contract-free and unlocked 16GB version of the iPhone 5C is available for $549 (about Rs 34,700) in the US, while an unlocked and contract-free iPhone 5S can be bought for $649 (about Rs 41,000). 

iPhone 5C will be a choice for consumers evaluating Apple's 16GB model of iPhone 5 while iPhone 5S can be an option for customers looking for an alternate option to 64GB model of iPhone 5. 

The 16GB variant of iPhone 5 is available in the country for around Rs 45,000 and 64GB variant of the smartphone is available for around Rs 59,000. 

Apple last week announced that iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C would be available in more than a dozen countries on November 1, including India, without revealing their prices. 

Apple has timed the release of latest iPhones in India before Diwali, which is on November 3. Apple products have previously hit the Indian markets in the last fortnight of November or the first fortnight of December.

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Beware! Fakes, grey market imports of reputed brands flourishing in India’s booming online retail market

Before you click on the 'buy' button on a great online deal, make sure the product is genuine, because it turns out that fakes and grey market imports of reputed brands are flourishing in India's booming online retail market.

Brands such as Lacoste, Puma, Benetton, Canon and Nikon have initiated moves ranging from taking legal actions and warning customers to negotiating with top retail portals to deal with the menace.

 

 Besides the loss of potential sales for marketers, online listing of fake and refurbished products impacts their brand equity as well as the overall credibility of online retail industry. "While there is certain proportion of loss of sales due to such fraudulent listing, it also jeopardises the brand name that matters to us," Rajesh Jain, director & CEO at Lacoste India, says.

Lacoste doesn't sell its wares online at all, but fakes of its polo T-shirt is available anywhere between Rs 600 and Rs 1,200 online against the original ones priced about Rs 3,000 a piece in the stores.

Sanjeev Mohanty, MD, Benetton India, says, "Most of these online websites tend to be run by fly-by-night operators without even proper offices. But we still take legal action against those who try to erode our brand equity." The Italian fashion brand sends at least one legal notice every month, while shoe and apparel maker Woodland sends out 5-6 legal notices every month, according to its MD Harkirat Singh.

While fashion brands are worried about fakes, consumer electronics and gadgets makers are concerned about parallel imports and refurbished products sold as new. Not every online shopping site is involved in such activities even though some of the bigger ones have been sent notices in recent past. Darshan Mehta, CEO of Reliance Brands, which represents several international brands in the country, says the company has received complaints from consumers who have bought, say, a fake Diesel jeans or a Quiksilver shirt. "But we have never faced such a scenario in the big online shopping sites," he says.

Big online retailers are as much worried about such fake sales as the impacted brands are. "Fakes are more relevant in the apparel category and do pose a danger towards the image of online retail," Saurabh Malik, business head at Indiatimes Shopping, says.

A recent report by Google said that building consumer trust will be the key to sustained growth of the e-commerce market, which is estimated at Rs 62,967 crore in India after growing 128 per cent in 2012.

To ensure that fakes are not sold through its platform, Indiatimes Shopping has forged direct relationships with almost all known brands in the country and every product that has risk of fakes comes with a certificate of authentication from the brand, Malik says. Some other big online shopping sites such as Flipkart, Myntra and Snapdeal, too, say they have started extensive screening of products sold as well as sellers using their platform, to ensure they are not illegal.

Myntra chief operating officer Ganesh Subramanian says the website has developed a fool-proof system to ensure that only authentic products are sold and hence does not sell categories like perfumes, which are more prone to fakes, and sell products at full price.

But experts say it's not easy to make a fool-proof system because several online websites have their back-end servers located outside the country in places such as China where cyber laws and IPR regulations are not strong. "Hence the onus, primarily, to put such products or content is on person or entity who shall be liable for placing counterfeits of copyrighted works," Advait Sethna, an advocate and counsel specialising in IP Laws, says.

Some firms such as smartphone brand BlackBerry and camera brand Canon have, meanwhile, initiated talks with leading retail portals to bring them under authorised online partner programme. "We have developed a digitally signed authorisation certificate for the products sold through online sellers to ensure the products are not refurbished or grey import," Alok Bharadwaj, executive vice-president at Canon India, says. "This also became necessary since the online sellers were not strictly following our trade terms, running their own promotions or schemes, which were not as per our norms," he adds.

Most marketers say online pricing is a headache for them. Japanese camera brand Nikon has issued an advisory for customers on its website that Flipkart and Snapdeal are not its authorised partners or dealers in India. Nikon India VP Sajjan Kumar says this was because these sites were selling at price points not fair for the market. While a Snapdeal spokesperson said pricing depends on the sellers who are licensed dealers, a Flipkart spokesperson said all Nikon products sold at the site are genuine.

German sports and lifestyle brand Puma, too, has voiced concern about pricing. Rajiv Mehta, managing director (South Asia) at Puma, says the brand monitors online pricing of its current season products. "If they blatantly discount it, we ask them to remove it. Since we are the biggest brand for leading online retailers in terms of sportswear, they listen to us," he says.

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Google Now, Siri not working? Here are a few tips

If used properly, Siri (Or Google Now, or any other voice assistant) can be incredibly helpful. The problem is that you need to know how to speak to them and they rarely come with instruction manuals. In some cases this is just getting used to what you can say, but you can also improve the chances it'll understand you with a few simple tricks. Here's what you can do.

Speak quickly without long pauses
Voice assistants aren't people so you can't talk to them like they are. While you can typically use natural language like "show me my calendar for tomorrow" as opposed to something more robotic like "show calendar for October 12 2013," you still want to keep your sentences short and to the point. So, quit stalling mid-sentence, asking multiple questions at once, or saying please and thank you.

You also want to speak quickly. It's a natural tendency to speak to your voice recognition apps in the same way you would a puppy: slow and methodically. But as we've pointed out before, it's actually best to speak quickly. Speak naturally and clearly, but don't strain to enunciate your words or speak incredibly slowly.

Correct it when it makes a mistake
You can also correct some things they get wrong to improve their understanding of you. On Android, you just need to add in an entry for a phonetic name so it pronounces it correctly. Head into Menu > Edit, and scroll down to Add Another Field to choose a phonetic name. With Siri, you have a couple options for this. You can tap any part of the speech bubble and type a correction so it learns what you're saying, or for improperly spoken names say, "That's not how you pronounce 'name'" and then follow the instructions.

Learn all the correct commands



Each type of speech recognition software has its own set of commands and the quicker you learn those commands the better it'll understand what you want. Once you know what you can ask, you'll be able to do things a lot quicker.

We've shown you a few of these commands. If you're using an Apple device, this list of Siri commands is plenty to get you started, and this Google Voice list is just a small sample of everything Google Now can do. The trick is learning what you can say to your voice assistant and how to say it. When you get the hang of it, they're a lot easier to use and they'll understand you more often.

Get the hang of using punctuation
While communicating with the assistant part of a virtual assistant is tough enough as it is, using the dictation function is even trickier if you don't know what you're doing. Thankfully, once you learn a few basic commands it's pretty easy.

For most dictation software, you only need to know a few different basic commands:

* "All caps" turns everything into capital letters.
* "Cap" capitalizes the word you speak next.
* Get punctuation by just saying it, "comma," "period," "exclamation point" all work how you'd expect.

You can also dictate emoticons by just saying things like "smiley" or "winkey" on the iPhone. On Android, you can do the same thing, but you need to add "face," so say "smiley face," or "winkey face."

It's a little awkward at first, but after you get used to it your dictation software will understand you a lot better.

Use a mic when you can


Finally, one of the reasons that your voice assistant of choice might not understand is the simple fact that it might not be hearing you correctly. If you're in a noisy place or it's just not picking up your audio correctly it's not going to know what you want it to do. If a mic's not around, just hold the phone's mic close to your mouth.

That's really it. Voice assistants like Siri and Google Now exist on servers so they're constantly being updated (which is also why you'll get faster results over Wi-Fi) to work better. Even still, provided you speak clearly and know what to say, they work really well.

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‘Indian firms to spend Rs 25cr on IT security in 2013‘

Faced with rise in malicious cyber attacks that try to steal critical data, Indian firms will spend over Rs 25 crore on average on information security this year, a study by global consulting firm PwC revealed. 

According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers' (PwC) the State of Information Security Survey 2014, spending by companies marks a 100 per cent increase compared to 2012. 

"Indian companies are spending more than Rs 25 crore on information security as they are reporting an increase in security incidents. This marks a 100 per cent increase in firms spending above this amount, compared to 2012," it said. 

The survey, PwC's sixth in India, was conducted as part of Global State of Information Security Survey 2014 by PwC, CIO Magazine and CSO Magazine. It covered 624 CEOs and senior management from across 17 industry sectors in India, it added. 

There has been 98 per cent increase in the number of information security incidents in May-June 2013 compared to the same time in 2012, when 2,989 such incidents were reported by the respondents, it said. 

PwC's evaluation, based on criteria like effectiveness of strategy, evaluation of security events and so on revealed that only 38 per cent of respondents covered can be considered as having advanced security system in place, the report revealed. 

"Survey results show that focus on emerging technologies and safeguards is the route to improvement. Organisations must identify most valuable assets and prioritise protection," PwC India Leader (Information Technology Risk Management) Sivarama Krishan told PTI. 

Security incidents should be seen as a critical business risk that may not always be preventable, but can be managed to acceptable levels, he added. 

Compared to global figures, India is playing catch-up in deploying safeguards like behavioural profiling, monitoring, security information and event management technologies and threat intelligence, the report said. 

Globally, China has the advantage in implementation of technology safeguards to protect against today's dynamic threats, it added. 

While, Russia also shows solid progress in deployment of safeguards that monitor data and assets, it is the US which leads the tally, it said. 

"Companies used traditional safeguards like firewall, etc, but now they are also using analytics to analyse the threats. However, India is still behind in the use to such techniques to check intrusions," Krishan said. 

Enterprise mobility and cloud services are gaining greater traction with organisations in India. Yet information security for mobile devices and cloud services lags behind adoption rates, the survey said. 

"Less than 50 per cent of respondents claim that their organisations have fundamental information security controls for mobile security and even less than 20 per cent have policies addressing use of mobile phones," it added.

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Video games can help adults be active: Study

Researchers have revealed that old adults can live not only longer but also healthy and active by playing video games. 

The report observed that people are living longer, but not necessarily living healthier and now they hope to accomplish that goal by using video games to promote fitness and encouraging older adults to get active. 

Jennifer Margrett, an associate professor of human development and family studies and director of the gerontology program said that their program is focused on whole-person wellness, and they want to include that socialization aspect with the physical activity. 

Margrett said that by socializing and doing interactive games, older adults are also exercising their brains, building relationships, and so it helps in more than one way. 

High school and college-age trainers led the eight-week exergaming program that combines strength-building exercises with video games, like tennis or bowling. The trainers teach older adults, who may be intimidated by the technology, how to use the gaming systems so they can continue with the program after the initial eight weeks. 

Researchers measured physical activity levels before and after the eight-week fitness program. Nearly half of the participants- all 60 years of age or older - initially described themselves as inactive. But by the end of the program, 52 percent of those inactive adults had increased their activity levels. 

The study is published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity.

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Why internet is different in South Korea

South Korea is one of the world's most digitally advanced countries. It has ubiquitous broadband, running at speeds that many Americans can only envy. Its Internet is also one of the most quirky in the world. 

A curfew restricts school-age children from playing online games at night; adults wanting to do so need to provide their resident registration numbers to prove that they are of age. 

Until last year, commenters on the Web were legally required to use their real names. A simple Web search in Korean can be a fruitless experience, because the operators of many sites, including some government ministries, bar search engines from indexing their pages. 

Travelers who want to go from Gimpo International Airport to the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul cannot rely on Google Maps. Google Maps can provide directions only for public transport, not for driving, to any place in Korea. Anyone crazy enough to try the journey on bicycle or on foot, directions for which Google Maps provides elsewhere, will be similarly stymied. 

The highly regulated Internet comes as a surprise to many people, Koreans included, because South Korea is a strong democracy with a vibrant economy seemingly ready for the digital information age. South Koreans were early adopters of Internet games and smartphones. It has world-beating electronics companies like Samsung and LG. But here the Internet is just different. 

The Korean government has its reasons, most of them well-intentioned. The curfew, for example, was put in place two years ago to deal with concerns about game addiction among teenagers. 

South Korean security restrictions that were put in place more than half a century ago after the Korean War limit Google's maps, the company says. The export of map data is barred, ostensibly to prevent it from falling into the hands of South Korea's foe to the north, across the world's most heavily fortified border. Google and other foreign Internet companies say the rule also prevents them from providing online mapping services, like navigation, that travelers have come to rely on in much of the rest of the world. 

The Korea Communications Standards Commission, a regulatory panel, blocks material on the Web that it deems objectionable. This can include pornography, the production of which is technically illegal in South Korea. 

"It's ironic, in a country that is widely recognized for its advanced digital infrastructure, that there are so many restrictions on the Internet in Korea," said Kim Keechang, a professor at Korea University who is writing a book on Internet regulation in South Korea. 

Foreign Internet companies say the country's rules prevent them from competing against domestic rivals because they cannot provide the same services they do elsewhere. South Korea is one of the few major markets where Google is not the leading search engine. A South Korean rival, Naver, has the most users. 

But domestic criticism of the Korean approach to Internet regulation is growing. Civil liberties advocates successfully challenged the rule requiring users of Internet discussion groups to provide their real names, verified by a national identity registration system. A court last year struck down the measure, which was introduced in 2007 to try to curb online bullying after a rash of suicides. 

Now the government of President Park Geun-hye is moving to ease some of the Internet regulations that previous administrations put in place. Park wants to encourage creativity in the South Korean high-technology industry, which is very good at developing hardware like smartphones and television sets but not as good at exporting software and services. Critics say the different rules that South Korean companies have to play by at home and abroad limit their ability to think in a worldly fashion.

 

 In September, the government promised to ease the restrictions on online mapping services. The National Geographic Information Institute, part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, said it would make an official English-language digital map available to Internet companies, beginning this month for companies based in South Korea. The ministry said it was changing its policy to help foreign Internet companies and to clear up uncertainties over Korean place names. 

The move comes at the same time as a new flare-up in a longstanding dispute over a group of islets between South Korea and Japan that are known variously as the Dokdo in Korea, the Takeshima in Japan and the Liancourt Rocks in some other places. (The islands are either in the Sea of Japan or the East Sea, which is another naming dispute.) For Google and other foreign companies, there is a hitch. They will be permitted to use the map as of next year, on a case-by-case basis. Now, Google adapts its English-language maps of South Korea from the government's Korean-language maps. Google is permitted to provide directions using public transit systems like the Seoul subway, because train and bus routes and schedules are available through public records. 

But Google says other sophisticated map enhancements, like driving directions, traffic information, three-dimensional modeling of cities and indoor floor plans of airports and shopping centers, require the company to process the data at its servers outside South Korea. This would constitute an export of the map data, which has been forbidden until now. 

Google says the policy change announced by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport does not go far enough. That is because the scale of the new official, English-language map is limited to 1:25,000, which the company says is insufficient to provide details that Google Maps users take for granted elsewhere. 

"Maps at the lower resolution don't have accurate enough information to guide people and cars through intersections, sidewalks, bike lanes, pedestrian overpasses and many points of interest," the company said in a statement. 

Google maintains that the rules are unfair because domestic Internet companies like Naver are able to provide online navigation and other mapping services, even to users outside the country. That is because Naver's servers are housed in South Korea. For many foreign visitors, though, Naver's maps are of limited use, because they are available only in Korean. 

"We just think any services should be carried out within the framework of the law," Google said. "The same laws should apply to all providers of Web map services, domestic or foreign."

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