Until Steve Jobs came along, apple was just a fruit that made my salad delicious and Mango, the king of fruits as famously perceived by every Indian. But now who says technology can't be savoured? If some Apple phones are selling like hot cakes, some handsets religiously carry in them the Ice Cream Sandwich. Yummy indeed.
That sets me thinking what's in a name? Steve Jobs chose apple perhaps because he couldn't really think of anything better than his previous workplace, the Oregon apple farm, and we presume it was not because apple was the fruit Biblical character Eve had offered to Adam.
But I seriously wonder if it is because apple is eye-perfect just as his iPhone, iPad and iPod. Its taste eternally copyrighted by nature and none, I mean no rival, can improve upon its contoured shape and its patented colour.
When the word rival crops up, I can't be forgetting great competitors Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are set to roll out their delightful dessert, Ice Cream Sandwich.
For Google, it is just continuation of the tradition of naming its operating systems based on a dessert in an alphabetical order: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb, but there is a possibility of it resulting in a greater appetite for yummy names. Going by Google's fantasy for hot 'n cold names, what will be the next one called? May be Jelly Bean or Jello Cream. For all that guesses, Google doesn't really mind such suggestions, of course quality ones.
The latest to tickle the technology taste buds is Microsoft's Mango phone. But have you ever wondered why is it Mango, and not Melon? Even if it was Microsoft's obsession with the letter M, I feel melon would have been better as one can't really make out from outside if it is ripe inside!
It seems a total disconnect to name man-made technology after nature's creations. Precisely, that's what makes technology delicious. How about a cookie byte or a cyber pizza on your menu?
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Posted on:
11/9/2011 at 9:12 PM
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In today's business, the term 'Cloud' has an interesting paradox about it. On one but literary hand, it denotes uncertainty about the future of any business, while on the other, the very term represents a succor for companies that are reeling under budgetary pressures caused by the recession.
Though the the Cloud technology was already there, it was during the recession that the technology with the help of a pay-per-use business model began gathering momentum in Indian market, especially when many projects and pilots were shelved halfway as companies pressed the panic button and tightened their purse strings to tackle the downturn.
This scenario gave not only a huge emphasis on the notion 'do more with less' but also a needed thrust to the business model – pay-as-you-go. Apart from Cloud, the same notion had also given birth to many 'lean products' like Intel's atom chip.
Cloud is not a new thing. Public Cloud has been ubiquitous around the world in the form of emails and social networking. But the newness about the concept is the sudden popularity that private Cloud has just got across the globe.
So what is the technology behind Cloud? An academic definition is that Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand. By using rented computing space, this technology enables you to pay for exactly what you use. In other words, you don't have to buy costly infrastructures like servers and data centers on your own and also incur a recurring annual maintenance cost.
Cloud and Small Businesses
Most of the small businesses in the world are always haunted by an empty purse and scared away by a need for an upfront hardware investment. But Cloud has given wings to their dreams as this technology has the potential to help them avoid any upfront investment in infrastructure and remain nimble and aggressive companies.
In Cloud-based ecosystem, your servers, data centers and other computing resources are owned by an outsider firm and you are accessing these through some networks. Hence, you could really do more with less as there would be no need to maintain an excess capacity that you don't need.
This technology enables anyone to buy software, platform, and other resources as service. Sales force's force.com, Google's App Engine, Amazon's Webservice and Microsoft's Azure are some of the Cloud platforms out there to choose from.
US based BrickSimple, which develops mobile application, is an example as to how Cloud could help small firms. The 10-member company developed an Xbox based game, which could be played from a mobile phone. When more and more users started to log in and play the game, the company saw its server crawl. As this small team was sure they would not be able to go for a high capacity server, they moved their server activities to Google's App Engine.
Therefore, at a time when venture capitalist are very cautious in funding startup ideas, Cloud and pay-per-use business model together have the potential to create a 'cloudburst' of business and profit.
India - Opportunities and Obstacles
There have been a lot of talks about the growth of telecommunication sector in India. However, what we see to day is that telcos like Bharti Airtel are moving to other continents like Africa, perhaps due to saturation of the business in a market where margins have taken a nasty hit due to a neck-to-neck price war. Meanwhile, the concept of private Cloud, at its nascent stage, offers a lot of scope to explore and innovate. AT&T, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Netmagic etc. are some of the companies who are mulling over strengthening their Cloud services portfolios for Indian market.
Microsoft is already on an aggressive mode and is very optimistic about the country. Its CEO Steve Ballmer thinks that the country will not only see a surge in cloud computing services but companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to Cloud.
Despite a bright prospect, there are certain factors that make Cloud's future a bit cloudy in the country. According to many CIOs, Indian companies are reluctant to move their infrastructure, data etc. to Cloud due to security fears.
No one is extra confident about keeping his highly confidential data in the possession of an outsider. Especially organizations like banks, who handle thousands of accounts, are a bit concerned about Cloud.
This concern cannot be overlooked given the fact that even the systems with super protection at Prime Minister's Office and the ones at Iran's nuclear plants and even Google itself are now easily targeted by hackers. Besides, platforms like Facebook and Twitter suffer hacking attacks every other day.
Moreover, there seems to be a mental block among companies in doing away with their age old legacy systems overnight.
But the Cloud service providers in the country are leaving no stones unturned in their attempt convince Indian enterprises to give up building and managing data centres and instead, switch to their private Cloud.
Moreover, some studies even go to the extent of saying that cloud computing will be more dominant than desktop computing in the future.
Next Big Thing
Mobile Cloud, I think, is an area which holds a lot of potential as far as India is concerned. Once this is in place, one could use his or her mobile to access applications hosted in a high capacity server by a third party and enjoy a faster processing. This means, the processing capacity will be offloaded to Cloud.
India stands to gain much from this possibility given the growth rate of mobile phone shipment in the country. The April-June quarter of this year has witnessed a record sales of mobile phones in the country. The number of units sold during this period is 38.63 million. This is all time high. An IDC report says that there is over 6.3 percent sales growth in this quarter as compared to the same time period in the previous year.
This numbers auger well for mobile Cloud in India.
Many believe that Cloud can save up to 40 per cent of the IT budget of a company on an average. Since such a saving could do magic on the bottom line of of an organization, there is no other option but go embrace Cloud.
More over, a Zinnov study says that 30 per cent, or $7 billion, of the global cloud computing work is to be offshored. Given that India is a low-cost destination of MNCs, these numbers are too tempting to be ignored, and so is Cloud.
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The HP-3PAR-Dell triangular wooing drama, which is over two weeks old, is yet to reach a culmination point. It all began when on August 16 Dell put forth an offer of $18 per share, about $1.2 billion, to acquire the utility storage company 3PAR.
The $18 per share offer seemed pretty decent, especially for a company whose stock was trading at $9.65 per share then.
It was all going well until HP decided to jump into the picture with a counter offer of $24 a share, which was a 33 percent higher than what Dell had to offer.
Though Dell soon countered this with an offer of $24.30 per share, HP quickly raised its bid price from $24 to $27 a share, or about $1.69 billion. Moreover, even before Dell could announce its reversed bid offer, if at all it had one then, on last Monday HP countered its own bid by putting forth an offer of $30 a share, or about $2 billion!
No matter who wins the battle, 3PAR share holders are ones who are going to gain the most. Within a span of two weeks the company in question saw its stock more than triple, from $9.65 per share before the bidding began to $30 a share as of today.
Although chances seems more favourable towards HP, as I write this piece no official news is yet out as to which PC giant, HP or Dell, will acquire the cloud computing data storage technology provider 3PAR.
So what makes this small Fremont, California-based data-storage company so attractive that led these two large storage providers to go after it for such a huge price.
Why are they wooing 3PAR? Read on...
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The wish to express ourselves, befriend, connect with others and share our interests, like never before, is making us swarm online networking sites and Facebook has emerged as the most popular site in India.
BANGALORE: Gone are the days of scrapping, sending and receiving testimonials, uploading videos, photos, and now it is writing on wall, posting images, giving status messages, poking each other, commenting on the status, updating likes and dislikes and so on.
The wish to express ourselves, befriend, connect with others and share our interests, like never before, is making us swarm online networking sites and Facebook has emerged as the most popular site in India.
Stealing millions of hearts with its attractive features, it connects people and friends in short time, runs successful social campaigns (like Meter Jam, Earth Day, Independence Day) and conducts quizzes, among many other things.
Who can forget the most engaging games like FarmVille? Which attracted millions of netizens and made us part time farmers, and for above features Facebook ought be on top.
It has indeed grabbed the number one position in India after surging past Orkut, Google’s social networking site which was number one till recently. And remember for years, the social networking tool of choice in India was Orkut, a side-project launched by a Google engineer that never caught on in North America but proved impossible to resist in India and Brazil.
A recent report from ComScore brought out flabbergast results which stated that Facebook grabbed the number one ranking in the social networking category for the first time in July with 20.9 million visitors, up 179 per cent, while Orkut registered a growth of only 16 per cent in the same time period with 19.9 million users.
“Facebook is far better than orkut. It has got so many options rather than just chatting and catching up with friends. Like you can play, poke, etc...” says, Aashika, manager in an IT firm.
Richa Prasad, an IT blogger, says, “Facebook is not only a social media/networking platform, but also helps in understanding more about a company. Companies talk about businesses, in a candid fashion. They talk about employee engagement, forums, various activities, which were not talked about before in mainstream media. One gets to meet industry people, understand their interests and network.”
Richa also adds, “It is good that I had connected my twitter and Facebook account. So even after Facebook is blocked, I can tweet updates and also make them accessible to Facebook by pretexting the tweet with #fb.”
But there are concerns too, regarding the use of such platforms. “The latest reports states that usage of social networking sites lead to loss of productivity. We have to keep in mind the investment made by our employer for infrastructure and I personally feel that, we shouldn't use it for personal work,” says Manasvi, IT professional who works for a reputed MNC in Bangalore.
The survey also declared India to be at the seventh position in the world for social networking with more than 33 million Internet users hitting the social networking sites in the month of July. The U.S., China, Germany, Russia, Brazil and UK are only ahead of India in this list.
Orkut is hardly in a position to overtake the heavily entrenched Facebook. However, Google is bringing some great ideas to the table that we can pretty safely expect to see in which social media platform they finally deliver.. Whats your say?
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9/1/2010 at 1:07 AM
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Tired of keeping a tab on all your followers on Twitter or finding it hard to go through all their recent tweets, then Paper.li is what you need.
Paper.li is the brain child of an Internet start-up based out of Switzerland, SmallRivers. This web application organizes links streams, tags and lists shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format.
A list newspaper is a great way to stay tuned to what a well defined group of people are sharing, without necessarily following them yourself. Paer.li also allows one to search tweets on a particular topic or tag.
The application, whose alpha mode was launched in April 2010, is all set to come out with its beta format very soon.
Though my own Twitter account is in its beta stages (actually just over the alpha and in to the beta), it's very useful to people who are very keen on Twitter, but find it hard to spare time on the go.
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Will the Google Mail service (GMail) ever exhaust its storage space? Chances are there, but then the question is when?
Today, as I write this piece GMail's free storage space stands at 7486 MB (approximately 7.5 GB) and according to it I've consumed 66 percent of my allotted space. That need not disturb the Big G, especially since its storage space have been increasing ever since its launch six years back in April 2004.
The 1GB storage space reputed mail service, which outwitted several others in the race by over 100 percent in terms of free storage space, seemed huge back in 2004. It was also never short of bringing in new feature, the latest being the changes in the contact management tool found inside Gmail.
'Professional looking mail IDs, that is what GMail meant to me back in 2005, when I opened my first e-mail account from college on the then one-year old Google's mail service.
I still remember the scoff on my professor's usually calm face when he was going through a list of "future journos'" e-mail IDs. It was an amalgam of fancy prefixes, suffixes and pet names that one could manage when their first, second, and God only knows how many more such attempts went futile in a feat to create ID on the most popular e-mail services of that time.
He must have got jolted and terrified at the very thought of over a dozen resumes doing rounds on the web space with his name as reference!
(Aside) I wonder when there could be seven lookalikes across the world, why couldn't e-mail service providers, such as Yahoo and Rediff, assume that there could be even more 'name-alikes' in the same world! But, then the cyber postman will be in trouble for sure!
Ok, now coming back to where we were before the aside. The very next moment he (my professor) 'ordered' every single person sitting in the classroom to create an e-mail ID with a 'professional touch' on GMail. And that is how me and 19 others got an ID in their names on GMail.
In a similar fashion GMail had been adding users till date and today this third largest e-mail service provider accounts for a little less than 20 crore users!
Thus, it didn't take much time for its engineers to see that 1GB storage space was just not enough to suffice the needs of its ever so hungry users. In 2005, GMail lunched its 'infinity+1' storage plan, and has been increasing the storage space ever since.
However, Mike Monteiro, the latest user to break the GMail limit, had to delete some mails as his inbox had exceeded the capacity, reports Mashable. He seems to have challenged Google's 'Who needs to delete when you have so much of storage' concept having emptied 94 per cent of its space.
So will this force Google to consider buying more storage?
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Even before the Google Buzz goof-up, where the Gmail add-on automatically exposed users' e-mail and chat contacts to the world at large, could wear off, the search engine giant has yet again fallen for a similar kind of a sin (that of privacy security breach), all because of the WiFi-snooping habits of its Street View cars.
Launched in 2007, Google Street View is a technology that provides views from various positions along many streets in the world. The data collected is used to improve Google’s location-based services, as well as services provided by the Google Geo Location API.
However, recently the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany asked Google to audit the WiFi data that its Street View cars collect.
It seems that the Street View cars have been collecting information sent over open Wi-Fi networks, contradicting previous assurances by the company. Until last month, Google stood on its ground claiming that its sniffer cars didn't really intercept payload data.
"While Google did collect publicly broadcast SSID information (the WiFi network name) and MAC addresses (the unique number given to a device like a WiFi router) using Street View cars, we did not collect payload data (information sent over the network)," said Alan Eustace, senior VP, Engineering & Research at Google in the company's Blog.
However, in the same blog, it admits to the snafu, as well.
"It’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products."
As per various reports, about 600GB of payload data was collected across 30 countries, and according to a letter Google posted to the web, the data fits onto four hard drives. Now, that sounds very less, right.
What so ever, it's very hard to believe Eustace's take, "Quite simply, it was a mistake". A mistake that took three years to dawn upon Google!
Well, Google counters it thus, "In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project, they included that code in their software - although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data."
Although Google terms it as an unintentional act, it doesn't really say that it was totally unaware of the snag in its software code. Google has also admitted its fault and its engineering team has taken the blame as well.
“The engineering team at Google works hard to earn your trust - and we are acutely aware that we failed badly here. We are profoundly sorry for this error and are determined to learn all the lessons we can from our mistake.”
However, it brings forth Google's utter lack of concern for privacy. Although it has grounded Street View cars and have taken measures to delete the 'unused, mistakenly collected' data as soon as possible in the presence of a third-party, it will take sometime to know to what extend was the whole act unintentional and a mere mistake.
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BANGALORE, INDIA: You have a day to celebrate every other occasion. Father's Day and Mother's day to remember that our parents are not 'obsolete' objects to be pushed into the morbidity of the old age homes, like that abandoned mobile handset; Teacher's Day to remember those old teachers who taught you the values of life, and not values of money; Valentine's Day to reiterate the strength of love and not lust!
And yet you see old age homes in every nook and corner, with those goldy oldies living in their golden past, hapless present and dark future.
Still we have students of all age taking their teachers for a ride and pledge their conscience for money.
And we hear of the love stories that threw all those values into wind to bargain for flesh.
We need a day made to make us remember; remember those values that we conveniently forget. That's the way of the world.
On the eve of the World Earth Day, which marks its 40th anniversary, more negative things come to mind, because in today's world of hi-tech and fast life, we conveniently forget the burden we cause to the earth, all thanks to our hi-flying life.
We are a generation that lives the Internet and eats and drinks SMS. The moment you switch off the mobile you feel that you are alienated from the world and missed that 'breaking news' from the dearest one.
And it is this weakness that is being exploited by most of the cellphone service firms. Everyone talks about talking, talking and more talking, 'waking and talking', but no one talks about the hazards it cause – to your health and the environment. Even an interesting advertisement can be a trap, mind it.
According to recent research more than one third of U.S. teenagers with cell phones send more than 100 texts a day. And the scenario is not different in other parts of the world too. It shows our addiction to technology rather than tech savvy-ness.
Forget technology, even our eating habits are causing imbalance to the environment. According to a UN report, the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the livestock industry is much higher than the transport sector. Twenty kilos of grain and 20,000 kilos of water are required to produce just one kilo of beef. If we bring down the consumption of beef, this carbon emission can also be brought down, but will the greatest beef eaters ever listen to it?
When Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, mooted the idea of a weekly meat-free day as the “most attractive” way for individuals to reduce emissions, the idea was received with brickbats, you remember?
But who will embrace vegetarianism for a day, at least on the World Earth Day?
When former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived the idea of World Earth Day, way back in 1970, to create awareness and appreciation of the Earth's environment, the ecological imbalance was not that severe. Still he felt that “the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country”. And interestingly, the condition is worse today and all our talk about climate change generates only heat!
Talking about the heat, we again hit upon the heat generated by technology.
According to US physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g CO2. Going a step further, a McAfee report on Carbon Footprint of Spam says that the annual energy used to transmit, process and filter spam totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), which is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes.
If this is the condition of an email, what would be the heat generated and energy consumed by the by the 50 million physical servers?
Then you argue that cloud computing is the cleanest technology of all to reduce the heat and carbon emission.
But, according to a recent Greenpeace report, cloud is also not that green. The report titled ‘Make IT Green: Cloud computing and its contribution to climate change’ says that at current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks -- the two key components of the cloud, will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020.
This is more than triple their current consumption and over half the current electricity consumption of the United States or more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.
“Unless cloud data centres are strategically placed to utilise or be co-developed with renewable sources of electricity, the data centre operators are stuck with the same problem everybody has, and having to accept the mix of clean and dirty energy sources that the electric utilities rely upon to feed the grid,” says Greenpeace.
The report says the launch of quintessential cloud computing devices like the Apple iPad, which offer users access to the "cloud" of online services like social networks and video streaming, can contribute to a much larger carbon footprint of the Information Technology (IT) sector than previously estimated.
But what are the actions taken by the tech giants world over to sincerely tackle the issue? Of course, green buildings are there, some advocate and practice rain water harvesting, quite a few of them have taken quite a few initiatives to curtail energy consumption and go green! Still we see the red signal all around us.
The cloud covers the sun, but it never rains! And we people send a text message cursing the climate and then go back to the favourite TV show like a couch potato – pretty much what you are going to do after reading this, in the next two minutes!
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4/22/2010 at 3:48 AM
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It is one of the fond memories that I have of my childhood. A black telephone that kept on ringing and ringing. Probably the only access to the world outside for the dwellers in the hillside township called Parambikulam was that talking instrument in that post office.
From the timber merchants to the forest guards the residents would come there to make a trunk call (STD was yet to be 'invented'!). Sometimes a call that was booked in the morning would get connected late at night. Those days the pace of the world was very slow. The postman never carried a 'snail mail'; it was the letter from the dear ones that he carried. And a telegram was often linked to the bad news. That someone has taken the heavenly abode. Very rarely would an appointment letter come in the form of a telegram.
Of course, that telephone gave a 'kingly' status to my father, who was the postmaster in that remote township in Kerala, which is connected by road from Tamil Nadu only.
Then, when we relocated to my hometown (those days it was a small village), there again the telephone in the post office was the window to the world. The privileged ones would make a trunk call to the remote cities – Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi.... Of course those were all 'emergency' talks and no chitchats. (Incidentally those were the days when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency and chitchats in ordinary life had also become difficult). “Work more, talk less”, said the iron lady.
The number of people who talked over telephone was much higher in native place, compared to Parambikulam because people in that part of the world had discovered the potential of the 'gulf economy' pretty early.
Those days, my father would say that the telecommunication has developed a lot. One can directly dial a local call. In the earlier days even a local call had to be routed via the post office, which came under the post and telegraphs department.
World was getting faster and faster...
Slowly one or two telephone booths came up here and there. The richer ones started making ISD calls to gulf countries though it was an expensive affair. Still, a personal telephone was an inaccessible luxury. There were only 70-75 telephones in our telephone exchange which covered two or three panchayats.
Those were the days when people had an emotional bond with the blue inland letter. Even now I clearly remember the first letter that I got. That was way back in 1980, when I was a high school student. The impression of the first day envelope with a golden coloured stamp of Gandhiji is still etched in my mind.
But modes of communication were getting transformed. By the time I was in college, something called group dialling had become common, and you could directly dial the number in the neighbouring exchanges.
But, by mid nineties, all of a sudden things got changed. Telephone booths became a common thing. Calling dear and near ones over telephone became a common affair.
Then, with the advent of cellphones the scenario was revolutionized. Telephonic conversations became a way of life and mobile phone became an extended part of the human body. Young people discovered love and much more over telephone. From SMS to MMS scandals our story of development scripted some subplots as well.
And today landline phones have become sort of an endangered species, thus are the telephone booths.
But technology cannot invade your memories.
That black instrument is still alive in my mind – as nostalgic as my childhood; as romantic as the first love.
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11/13/2009 at 12:53 AM
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“The only thing that does not change, is the change itself.” This famous quote is not to be seen only in the context of a communism-driven social scenario. The ever-happening tech scenario has much to do with the concept of change that never changes.
Every cutting-edge technology means change, change and more change.
The latest trend in consumer market of the world tech industry is the fast adoption of smartphones, with companies like Nokia, HTC, Research in Motion, Apple and lately Acer besides many others jostling for market share with high end phones.
If some study results can be trusted, all the feature phones in the world will be replaced by smartphones in the future. As per IDC, 70 per cent of mobile devices would be smartphones by 2010. Currently the market for smartphones is around 40 per cent.
This demand for smartphones is obviously driven by the craving of people for some portable device to stay in touch with their office, friends and family even while they are on the move. Actually it was due to this need that netbooks became a huge success in the consumer market. And now smartphone takes a step further in ensuring a convenient active and connected life for the people because it is basically your phone and it becomes a PC when you need one, just like a chameleon changing colors in accordance with the environs.
Interestingly, Acer, which is a netbook king, is now going all out to the smartphone market and targets to capture 10 per cent of the Indian market in one year. The company's Smart Handheld business group's country head Richard Tan says that the price of the smartphones are coming down, and it would therefore replace almost all the feature phones in the market.
But Tan seems to be quite sure about the imminent shift of users from netbooks to smartphones, and this foray of the company to smartphones market can be seen as a strategy to ensure that consumers' money returns to Acer's kitty even when they ditch its netbooks and go for smartphones.
However, a common man may not be a big gainer, he may think, “To buy a smartphone with Internet connection will engender a trouble of paying a comparatively big monthly bill (as you use more and more possibilities including MMS, Internet and much more). But to buy one without Internet is a foolishness too.”
And finally, there arises a question as to what is smart? Less than a decade back a mobile phone was a luxury and every model was smarter. What is is smart today can also become obsolete tomorrow when a smarter one emerges.
So what is the parameter to be smarter tomorrow? Any answers?
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