The golden age for digital content firms coming

VietNamNet Bridge – Digital content service providers now gear up to implement a lot of investment projects to grab the golden opportunities to come in the “second Internet wave” in Vietnam.

Phan Sao Nam, President of VTC Online, in an interview given to Buu dien newspaper, mentioned the notion “second Internet wave,” saying that digital content firms need to prepare well for the wave which would last 3-5 years only.

Vietnam witnessed the first Internet wave in the 1997-2007, when the number of Internet users jumped from zero to 10 million. At that time, dotcoms developed very strongly by launching a lot of applications that can change the lives of people.

Nowadays, the appearance of 3G and smart mobile devices which can satisfy the digital convergence trend has led to the sharp increase of mobile Internet users. In the last three years, the number of people accessing Internet from their mobile phones has increased from zero to 13 million.

If the rapid growth rate continues, the number of Internet users would climb to 50 million in the next three or five years. By that time, the market would reach its peak of development, which would later go horizontally, thus making this a new habit for consumers.

According to Kinh te Vietnam newspaper, the government of Vietnam strives to have 60 percent of the population to use Internet services by 2020.

Technologically, a senior executive of VinaPhone, one of the three biggest mobile network operators, affirmed at a recent workshop on digital content services in HCM City that in the near future, 3G would be the main wireless network connection tool which would be by far superior to wifi technology.

“It is now the transitional period between the first and the second Internet waves, with the second wave nearly coming,” Nam said.

However, Nam said Vietnamese IT firms should hurry to prepare for the second Internet wave, or they would lose the opportunity, because the wave would not last for a long time.

There is not much more time to hesitate, because the golden opportunity would not come back again. When the Internet market breaks even, the positions of the service providers on the market would be disposed.

Meanwhile, according to Nam, only the enterprises in the top 3 in the Internet market would be able to survive and develop.

Nam compares Vietnamese digital content firms with “the excellent, but poor students.” Though the firms have a lot of good ideas, they cannot grow up because they lack capital. Therefore, they need the investors who can help them make the ideas realistic.

VTC Online has found an investor suitable for it. DWS, an investment fund from the global finance group Deutsche Bank has agreed to invest 10 million dollars in VTC Online, while the cash was remitted to VTC Online’s account in July 2012.

Analysts believe that in Vietnam, the Internet-service relating firms are now the top choice for foreign investment funds, which have realized that Vietnam is the country with the highest growth rate of Internet users, and that the digital content industry still has been developing well despite the big economic difficulties.

While the businesses in many business fields are facing big difficulties, going to bankrupted or undergoing restructure process, the enterprises in the digital content industry still have been developing strongly.

Le Hong Minh, General Director of VNG, said on Zing.news the corporation hopes to obtain the turnover of 4600 billion dong from games in 2012, adding that 15 million people play games every day.

Compiled by C. V

Apple awarded over $1bn in Samsung patent infringement trial

Jury finds that critical features of smartphone and tablet design were copied and dismisses South Korean firm's counterclaims

Samsung have been ordered to pay Apple over $1bn in damages after a jury found it infringed patents on smartphones and tablets. Photograph: Ahn Young-Joon/AP

Apple has been awarded more than $1bn in damages after its rival smartphone and tablet manufacturer Samsung was found to have copied critical features of its iPhone and iPad.
The US jury stunned observers by returning a decision after just two and a half days' deliberation following four weeks of legal argument.
The jurors rejected every single one of the South Korean company's patent claims, and backed Apple's claim that Samsung had breached US antitrust laws by trying to keep its wireless patents as a monopoly.
The decision means that Apple has gained a major weapon in its fight against Samsung, which is the biggest maker of smartphones and mobile phones in the world, and the biggest of the Android handset makers.
The verdict will also be a key platform in Apple's ongoing court battles with other Android smartphone companies, including HTC and Motorola.
Samsung and Apple have been at war through the courts since April 2011, when Apple filed a suit in the US alleging that a number of Samsung smartphones and tablets used some of its patented technologies – such as the "rubber band" effect when scrolling a long list of items – and mimicked its "trade dress", the general cosmetic appearance of its iPhone and iPad, in a way that could confuse potential customers.
On Friday Samsung issued a statement saying: "Today's verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies.
"Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple's claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer."
Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, kicked off the battle, telling his biographer Walter Isaacson that he would go "thermonuclear" in his battle against Android because he felt that it had copied elements of the iPhone's behaviour. That started with HTC's implementation in 2010 of Android.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40bn in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs told Isaacson. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
An attempted peace pact between Jobs and Eric Schmidt, then Google's chief executive, came to nothing. But Apple's war against Google has been indirect — targeting the handset makers that use Android rather than the search giant which writes the software itself.
Evidence of Jobs's antipathy to Android was excluded from the evidence heard in court.
Samsung, in this case, responded that Apple had used its patented technology for 3G wireless connectivity without permission, and that it used some of its patented methods, such as sending photos from a camera-equipped phone. Those claims were rejected by the jury.
Samsung had also insisted that Apple's technology patents were invalid because of previous inventions by rival firms, which it demonstrated in the court. It said that the "trade dress" claims were nonsensical, and that customers were not confused.
An area of relief for Samsung was that the jury decided its Galaxy tablets did not look so much like the iPad as to breach "trade dress". But they hit it with a billion-dollar damages decision for infringing Apple's "utility" patents on its behaviour.
Samsung is expected to appeal to a higher court. But the victory for Apple is a publicity coup as the battle for control of the smartphone and tablet market intensifies ahead of the Christmas period — during which Apple is expected to have a new iPhone on release, and possibly a new, smaller version of the iPad.
Apple and Samsung are suing each other in more than 30 cases around the world in Europe, Australia and the US. Apple, based in Cupertino — just 10 miles from the San Jose court where lawyers for the two sides made their case — is fighting multiple cases against rival smartphone makers which use Google's Android software, including Samsung, HTC and Motorola — the latter now owned by Google.
The decision is a critical blow in the smartphone wars now going on around the world between Apple and Samsung, and by proxy between Apple and other makers of smartphones using Google's Android software. Samsung is the biggest mobile, smartphone and Android mobile company — meaning that this decision will resound throughout the industry.
Reaching a decision had looked like a labyrinthine process. Judge Lucy Koh's instructions on how to decide ran to 109 pages and took over two hours to read out after the two companies had spent four weeks arguing in court.
The jury then had to negotiate a verdict paper consisting of 20 pages with 33 questions which offered, in total, about 700 options – although it all boiled down to four: were Apple's claimed patents infringed and if so how much was it owed? And: were Samsung's claimed patents infringed, and if so how much was it owed?
Yet they reached their verdict after barely two days' deliberation, surprising legal experts who had thought that the decision could take weeks. The jury for the high-profile trial in which Oracle sued Google alleging that the Android mobile operating system infringed its patents. The jury then took two weeks to reach a verdict that largely exonerated Google.
Apple brought a high-profile array of executives to testify including Phil Schiller, its longtime head of marketing, and Scott Forstall, who heads its iPhone and iPad software division. Apple also showed prototypes of the iPhone and iPad dating back to 2003, as well as an internal Samsung document comparing the iPhone's behaviour with that of Samsung's smartphone, which described the difference as "Heaven and Earth" and noted hundreds of items of difference where Samsung needed to improve.
The jury of seven men and two women, all from California, included four who have worked for technology companies including chipmaker Intel and phone business AT&T, and two engineers. One member owns multiple Apple and Samsung products, according to CNet. Five are over 50; three were born outside the US – one in India and two in the Philippines.
The result came just hours after a South Korean court had ruled against both Apple and Samsung, deciding that they had each infringed each others' patents. Both were fined and told to take some of their products off the shelves in that country.

 The guardian

Vietnamese telcos’ dumping destroys international VoIP call service market

VietNamNet Bridge – In the past, inbound VoIP service providing was considered the goose that laid golden eggs because it brought fat profit to telecom groups. However, the market has been devastated by the groups themselves.

VoIP service fees dumped

In the last 10 years, Vietnamese telecom companies have got big money from foreign telecom exploiters paid for by the connection of the calls from overseas with the subscribers in Vietnam.

At that time, Vietnamese telcos were very happy because they did not have to make heavy investment in the service, but still could earn a lot of money.

Especially, a telco even said that this was a kind of service allowing to take back the investment capital just after one day. With the fat profit from the service, some bare-handed companies have become prosperous.

However, the Vietnamese telcos now cannot enjoy the tidbit any more. In order to obtain more clients, Vietnamese telcos have been trying to lower the service fees. The actions have not helped them obtain more clients, but have made them weaker.

In fact, Vietnamese telcos well understand that the dumping has done harm to them and that they need to join forces with each other to develop instead of extirpating others. However, since no proper solution has been found, they continue struggling with each other, even though they know the struggle may drag them to the abyss.

The telcos immediately broke the commitments on the floor service fees right after they made the commitments. They would be ready to go back on their words in return for the higher volume of VoIP.

In 2003, Viettel (which did not provide mobile service at that moment), planned to come forward and set up a VoIP association that connected telcos and acted for the common benefit. However, the plan then failed completely, because enterprises did not respect their promises.

Service fee down 10 times within 10 years

In the golden age, the incoming VoIP international call service fee charged by Vietnamese telcos was 35-45 cent per minute, or 7000-9000 dong.

In a recent decision released on March 2, 2011, the Ministry of Information and Communication decided that the floor price for VoIP international call service is 855 dong per minute, while the selling of services at the price lower than the floor price would be considered as an activity of dumping.

At a meeting gathering the leaders in the business field, including the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT), Viettel, EVN Telecom, VTC, CMC and Indochinatelecom held in mid May 2011, enterprises committed to set up the service fee at 4.1 cent per minute, or 800 dong.

However, at that moment, the VoIP international incoming call service dropped to less than 3 cent per minute.

As such, VoIP service has turned from the fertile land into the exhausted field.

At a meeting with the Ministry of Information and Communication, an executive of VNPT, said Vietnamese firms have been continuously slashing the international payment charges, calling for the intervention from the Ministry of Information and Communication.

Also according to the executive, the average fee in the world market is 5 cent per minute, while Vietnamese enterprises accept the 2-3.2 cent per minute fee.

SPT has also confirmed that the price levels are nearly close to the production cost, and that if the prices are lowered further, telcos would incur losses.

VTC has also said that the service now cannot bring profits, and that Vietnam has been the unpaid worker for foreign companies.

Buu Dien

Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation Version

Microsoft released an evaluation version of Windows 8 Enterprise Aug. 22 as the company seeks to convince large businesses to engage in what is typically a complex and costly upgrade project.

Microsoft has released the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation version making it available free for 90 days in an effort to prove to major customers that the added features in the new operating system are worth the time and expense of an upgrade.

In a blog post accompanying the release, Mitch Irsfeld, editor of the Microsoft publication TechNet Flash, wrote Aug. 22 that Windows 8 Enterprise will be built upon Windows 8 Pro, the OS for business-targeted client devices, but will add enterprise-class features on top of that.

Those enterprise features include what he called “sideloading,” a process for adding line-of-business software applications to run on Window 8 machines. With sideloading, enterprises can load their private business apps onto a PC without having to publish them to the Windows Store, which is important for users that have created customized and proprietary apps.

Developers can write their own apps in widely used languages such as C#, C++, JavaScript, and Microsoft’s Visual Basic. Irsfeld also notes that “the majority of your existing line-of-business apps” that run on Windows 7 will run on Windows 8.

Windows 8 Enterprise also includes a built-in print driver that supports “a wide range” of printers without the hassle of installing printer drivers from CDs or the Web onto print servers or client devices.

“Windows 8 is well suited for touch-centric devices,” Irsfeld writes, but also works with the existing mouse/keyboard user interface people use now. This assertion is met with skepticism in some quarters. Industry analyst Rob Enderle, who has tried Windows 8 on a touch screen tablet and with a mouse/keyboard combination, says the OS seems to be designed more for touch.

“[Windows 8] works really well with touch, but it pretty much sucks without it,” he said.

Nonetheless, Microsoft has introduced its own line of peripherals to run a Windows 8 machine, including wireless keyboards and a futuristic looking Microsoft Wedge Touch mouse.

There are going to be two variations of the OS. Windows RT is for devices that use ARM-based processors that are typically installed in tablets and smartphones, and Windows 8 Pro is for devices running x86-based processors that are widely used in desktops and laptops.

Microsoft also touts the availability of the Web browser Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 as a plus for enterprises, including the SmartScreen security feature to block browser-delivered Malware, Irsfeld notes. And Windows 8 links the enterprise user to SkyDrive, the cloud-based storage service that also enables enterprise file sharing.

As attractive as these features might be to an enterprise user, they still may not overcome enterprise resistance to undertaking an OS migration project.

An IDC study of Windows OS migration in the enterprise, released in May, revealed that while migration to Windows 7 is steady, 42 percent of PCs in business environments were still running Windows XP at the end of 2011.

Because the process of migrating an entire enterprise to a major OS upgrade involves planning, application integration and considerable testing, not to mention a significant provision in IT budgets, such a project requires time and careful consideration.

IDC said in its report that it doesn’t expect to see wide commercial deployments of Windows 8 until late 2013 or early 2014 and that even if businesses buy new computers, they may exercise “downgrade deployment rights” to buy new hardware shipped with Windows 7 even when Windows 8 becomes widely available.

 http://www.eweek.com

Software firms hold Japanese firmly, make friends with Asian

VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese software exporters tend to expand their Asian markets together with exploiting the loyal markets of Japan or the US.

Hurrying to seek new markets

Despite the world’s gloomy economy, Vietnamese software firms still reaped fruits in the first six months of the year.

The Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technology (FPT), for example, had the total software export turnover higher by 30 percent than that of the same period of the last year. Meanwhile, CMC Soft earned 500,000 dollars in the period between April 1, to the end of July 2012.

Japan and the US remain the two biggest loyal markets for Vietnamese software exporters. The turnover from the Japanese market accounts for 54 percent of FPT’s total export turnover, while the export turnover to the market has been growing steadily by 40 percent per annum. Meanwhile, the 50 percent growth rate has been forecast for the US market in 2012.

However, Vietnamese IT firms have seen some signs of slowdown in the markets. Tran Vu Viet Anh, a senior executive of CMC Soft, said the Japanese economy has been facing big difficulties because of the natural calamities and the world’s economic recession, which makes it very difficult to find new partners in the market.

In fact, CMC Soft has got some more new Japanese partners so far this year, but the values of the contracts signed with them remain modest.

Therefore, Vietnamese IT firms have all been hurrying to seek new markets. “We can see the great potentials from South East Asia. A lot of multinational groups have their business branches in the region thanks to the favorable business environment, preferential policies and cheap labor force,” Anh explained.

“Besides, we have also got some orders from North European clients,” he added.

Nguyen Ich Vinh, General Director of the Tinh Van Software Export Company, has also said the US and European economies are facing big difficulties, which makes it impossible to expand the markets. Therefore, Tinh Van now focuses on exporting software products to Japan and Singapore.

An executive of FPT Soft, though confirming that Japan and the US remain the two main markets for FPT Soft, has said that FPT has laid down the foundation for it to march towards the European market. It is expecting the positive signals from the German market in 2012.

Laborforce remains a headache

In fact, despite the current economic difficulties, the loyal markets remain big enough. The Japanese market, for example, had the software outsourcing value of 10 billion dollars in 2011, while FPT, a Vietnamese “big guy” could earn 35 million dollars only from the market.

Observers have noted that Vietnamese firms still cannot treat their chronic disease of lacking qualified professional staff, who have good foreign language skills and soft skills.

An executive of FPT said in the first half of 2012, FPT received a lot of orders from big clients, including the contracts valued at millions of dollars. However, the firm was seriously lacking the workforce.

Since the labor force provided by universities cannot satisfy the demand, FPT has to make investment in training establishments itself to ensure the sustainable supply of personnel for the company.

In 2012, FPT plans to train 1200 software engineers, while 760 have been trained in the first half of the year. It hopes to have 5000 engineers by the end of 2013, while the figure would rise to 10,000 by 2016.

Buu Dien

IBM Asks Electrons to the Big Dance

Like planets around the sun, electrons rotate about their axes while orbiting the nucleus of atoms. Spintronic devices generate or manipulate spin-polarized electrons so there are more electrons with one direction of spin. Learning how to manipulate spin is a step toward developing spin-based transistors.

Researchers from IBM and European university ETH Zurich have announced they have directly mapped the formation of a persistent spin helix in a semiconductor for the first time. They observed how electron spins move in a semiconductor while rotating, like couples doing a waltz. This will let them manipulate the spin, which is a crucial step toward developing spin-based transistors that can be electrically programmed. That, in turn, could help achieve more efficient means of storing data.

This area of study is called "spintronics."

"Moore's Law is going to hit a wall in the next 10 years, and spintronics is one of several levers we can pull to continue to produce faster, smaller and more energy-efficient transistors," Chris Sciacca, a spokesperson for IBM Research, told TechNewsWorld. Researchers from IBM and European university ETH Zurich have announced they have directly mapped the formation of a persistent spin helix in a semiconductor for the first time.

They observed how electron spins move in a semiconductor while rotating, like couples doing a waltz. This will let them manipulate the spin, which is a crucial step toward developing spin-based transistors that can be electrically programmed.

That, in turn, could help achieve more efficient means of storing data.

This area of study is called "spintronics."

"Moore's Law is going to hit a wall in the next 10 years, and spintronics is one of several levers we can pull to continue to produce faster, smaller and more energy-efficient transistors," Chris Sciacca, a spokesperson for IBM Research, told TechNewsWorld.

"Given the amount we will have to store in the future, with all of the new big-data and business analytics heading our way, this is an important technology," Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics, told TechNewsWorld. "This is probably why IBM is in the forefront of this technology."

Spin City

As the amount of data we need to store is expanding beyond the capability of traditional storage technologies to handle it, semiconductors continue to shrink through the use of new processes.

That makes it difficult to expand storage capabilities. Data is stored by leveraging the electrical charges of electrons, but as semiconductors shrink, it becomes more difficult to control the flow of electrons.

Spintronics could get around this problem by harnessing the spin of electrons instead of their charge.

"Positive, negative. Binary on, off," Clabby said. "Same issue as always -- finding ways to create bits more efficiently."

Pumping Up the Electrons

Like planets around the sun, electrons rotate about their axes while orbiting the nucleus of atoms. In many materials, there are an equal number of electrons with up and down spins. Spintronic devices generate or manipulate spin-polarized electrons so there are more electrons with one direction of spin.

The length of time the polarized electrons remain that way is known as the "spin lifetime."

The researchers synchronized the electrons in a zinc blende well in a gallium arsenide semiconductor. This synchronization extended the spin lifetime of the electrons by 30 times, to 1.1 nanoseconds. That's the same time it takes for one cycle on a 1 GHz processor, IBM said.

The Techniques Used

The researchers used ultra-short laser pulses to monitor the evolution of thousands of electron spins that were created simultaneously in a very small spot.

This let them see how the spins arranged neatly into a regular stripe-like pattern. This pattern is called the "persistent spin helix."

A carefully engineered spin-orbit interaction coupled the spin with the motion of the electrons. Synchronization of the rotation of the electron spins let the researchers observe the spins travel for more than 10 micrometers. This increases the possibility of using the spin for processing logical operations.

The researchers imaged the synchronous movement of the electron spins with a time-resolved scanning microscope technique.

The project was conducted at 40 Kelvin, which is -387 degrees Fahrenheit.

What's Next

"The next step for the scientists is to improve the spin lifetime even further and to study the materials at higher temperatures," IBM's Sciacca said. The researchers "believe they can bring the temperature considerably closer to room temperature already."

Spintronics "is at the early pregnancy stage," David Hill, principal at Mesabi Group, told TechNewsWorld. "There is a long time before the technology embryo becomes born and even longer before it grows up."

This "kinda reminds me of when processors started to melt down as they approached 5 GHz, which is the end of Moore's Law," Clabby Analytics' Clabby said. "Scientists moved to multi-cores to handle processing in a different way. I'm thinking that some other approach like this multi-core approach would have to be found."

Spintronics will complement, rather than supersede, flash memory, Clabby suggested. "Flash is good for processing high IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second), but hard drives process other workloads more efficiently. Tapes do storage most cost-effectively. So nothing really supersedes anything else."

 technewsworld.com

Doubt Descends on $199 Surface Rumor

A recent report suggests the price of the upcoming Surface tablet from Microsoft will be set at $199. That would severely undercut the prices charged for the full-sized tablets Surface to which Surface has been compared. However, the report has been met with a heavy helping of skepticism. Doubters say a different, smaller version of the Surface could eventually sell for $200, though.

Microsoft's upcoming Surface, the company's first in-house tablet PC, is scheduled to launch later this year. Microsoft hasn't confirmed how much the Surface will cost , but a recent Engadget report pegs its price at US$199, greatly undercutting presumed rival iPad and matching the price of much smaller tablets like the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7.

When the Surface was first shown earlier this year, Microsoft did not reveal details about pricing other than to say it would be competitive with similar devices.

The market leader in tablets, Apple's iPad, starts at $499 for the newest version. Competitors like Samsung's Galaxy Note, which runs the Android operating system, go for more than $500.

The Surface will feature a 10.56-inch display, an emphasis on entertainment apps, a Touch Cover that doubles as a keyboard, and Microsoft's highly anticipated upcoming operating system, Windows 8.

The tablet is also notable for being the first PC device for which Microsoft will manufacture both the hardware and software. The company does the same with its Xbox gaming console, but its move to the PC side has rattled some its longtime hardware partners, including Acer.

The Surface doesn't have an official release date but is scheduled to launch around the same time that Windows 8 debuts this fall.

Microsoft did not respond to our request for comment.

Is It Possible?

Pricing is critical for any tablet hoping to launch into a highly competitive market, said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. As manufacturers struggle to launch devices that can compete with the iPad, some are weighted down by too-heavy price tags. Other competitors, like Amazon's Kindle Fire, maintain a low price and sell for little to no profit, then make up for it in sales from online digital content stores.

Microsoft, though, doesn't have the advantage of being able to make up for low prices from digital content offerings. It also has other tablets that are set to run on Windows 8 that it needs to promote, making such a low price unlikely, said Moorhead.

"I do not think the Surface will be priced anywhere near $199 without a monthly subscription service, as it would destroy all the other Windows RT tablets that were referenced in Microsoft's latest blog post," he told the E-Commerce Times.

For Microsoft, a latecomer in the tablet war, to make a dent, it needs as many compelling Windows 8 tablet offerings as it can, said Moorhead, and if the Surface flies off the shelves for $200, the company risks alienating the rest of its line even further.

"Microsoft needs masses of sexy Windows RT tablets now, and they can't afford yet to kill the hardware ecosystem for consumer devices in the process," he said.

If it can promote all of its tablets, though, Microsoft has a chance to be competitive in the ongoing tablet war, said Moorhead, especially if the new applications for Windows 8 turn out to be as promising as the company alleges.

"The key to pricing is applications. It is the prime driver," he said. "Without Metro apps, the tablet will fail. With them, it has a shot at glory. I believe Microsoft needs at least 5,000 well-known and high-quality apps at launch. If there's anything the industry learned from Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook and the webOS TouchPad, it's that applications matter, and if you don't have them at launch, your product will suffer the consequences."

Scaled-Down Version

However, the company likely wants to make as big of a splash as possible when it hits the market. That could include low pricing, said Bob Egan, vice president of mobile strategy at Mobiquity and analyst at GigaOM Pro, even if a $199 10-inch tablet might be a stretch. That means taking matters into its own hands and producing a product as efficiently as possible.

"Ballmer has the will and the wallet to do battle against Apple, and he is making a big bet on the Surface across multiple form factors," he said. "Microsoft will continue to erode any, if not all, reverence to existing hardware partners and build much of its own hardware and vertically integrated software and hardware offerings."

With that kind of commitment to cost-effectiveness, it's possible the company could launch a 'light' version of the Surface, said Egan.

"There is little doubt in my mind that Microsoft will offer an entry, WiFi-only Surface tablet at $199 that it manufacturers itself," he said

 technewsworld.com

Vietnamese big telcos landing in new markets

VietNamNet Bridge – VNPT is clearing the way to enter Myanmar. Viettel is making hectic preparations to land in Ethiopia and Africa after it just opened a branch in East Timor. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Information and Communication has promised to lay down a perfect legal framework to encourage Vietnamese enterprises to make outward investment.

myanmar-business.org, a website about Myanmar’s business network, has cited Xinhua news as saying that a group of high ranking executives of the Vietnam Post and Communication Group (VNPT) came to Myanmar in late July to seek the opportunities to develop telecom services in the market.

In Vietnam, VNPT is known as the biggest telecom group which is running the two biggest mobile networks VinaPhone and MobiFone. The group strives to become one of the 10 leading information technology and telecommunication solution providers in Asia by 2015.

The group of VNPT’s executives to Myanmar was headed by Le Ngoc Minh, Deputy General Director of VNPT and General Director of VMS MobiFone.

The four day working visit in late July marked the first step taken by MobiFone in its plan to expand business to foreign new markets.

Minh said that MobiFone wishes to help Myanmar’s telecom partners shorten the time needed to launch services into the markets, and turn telecom services, which are considered luxurious for the majority of people, into popular services that fit the pockets of people.

Meanwhile, most of the newswires in Africa and Kenya have unanimously reported that Kenya has become the “aiming point” of Viettel, a big Vietnamese telecom group, which is moving ahead with its plan to provide mobile services in the African market.

Dailykenya has predicted that Kenya may officially welcome the fifth mobile service provider in the market in some more days, and that Viettel is seeking business opportunities in the East African country by setting up a branch in Nairobi, the capital city and the biggest city of Kenya.

In the interview given to The Nation, Nguyen Duy Tho, Viettel Global Director, affirmed that it keeps optimistic about the business plan in the new markets.

Tho said Viettel is a small investor if compared with other international telecom groups. However, Viettel well understands developing markets which would help the group succeed there.

However, Tho declined to reveal the details about the plan of Viettel to penetrate Kenyan market.

When entering the market, Viettel would have to compete with other four existing service providers, Safaricom, Airtel, yuMobile và Orange

However, Viettel is still considered a redoubtable rival after it has successfully developed mobile networks in Cambodia (Metfone network), Laos (Unitel), Haiti (Natcom), Peru (Viettel Peru) and East Timor.

In the latest news, ProInversíon, an investment promotion agency in Peru, on August 14 made an announcement that Peru SAC, a branch of Viettel, obtained a contract on telecom service in the South American country.

According to Telegeography, besides Kenya, Viettel has expressed its interests in North Korean, Cuban, Venezuelan, Slovakian, Paraguay, Tanzanian and Cameroon markets as well.

Meanwhile, at the ceremony to celebrate the first anniversary of the Telecom Agency under the Ministry of Information and Communication on August 14, leaders of the ministry emphasized that one of the most important tasks for the agency in the time to come is to lay down a perfect legal framework to encourage Vietnamese enterprises to make investment in foreign countries.

The Vietnamese telecom market is believed to nearly hit the saturation point, which has prompted big telecom groups to push up their outward investments.

Compiled by C. V

Your Life Is Fully Mobile

We walk, talk and sleep with our phones. But are we more—or less—connected?

Just as remarkable as the power of mobility, over everything from love to learning to global development, is how fast it all happened. It is hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones. Not the knife or match, the pen or page. Only money comes close—always at hand, don’t leave home without it. But most of us don’t take a wallet to bed with us, don’t reach for it and check it every few minutes, and however useful money is in pursuit of fame, romance, revolution, it is inert compared with a smart phone—which can replace your wallet now anyway.


Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips. A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon. In many parts of the world, more people have access to a mobile device than to a toilet or running water; for millions, this is the first phone they’ve ever had. In the U.S., close to 9 in 10 adults carry a mobile, leaving its marks on body, mind, spirit. There’s a smart-phone gait: the slow sidewalk weave that comes from being lost in conversation rather than looking where you’re going. Thumbs are stronger, attention shorter, temptation everywhere: we can always be, mentally, digitally, someplace other than where we are.
So how do we feel about this? To better understand attitudes about mass mobility, Time, in cooperation with Qualcomm, launched the Time Mobility Poll, a survey of close to 5,000 people of all age groups and income levels in eight countries: the U.S., the U.K., China, India, South Korea, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil. Even the best survey can be only a snapshot in time, but this is a crisp and textured one—­revealing a lot about both where we are now and where the mobile wave is taking us next.

A tool our parents could not have imagined has become a lifeline we can’t do without. Not for a day—in most cases not even for an hour. In Time’s poll, 1 in 4 people check it every 30 minutes, 1 in 5 every 10 minutes. A third of respondents admitted that being without their mobile for even short periods leaves them feeling anxious. It is a form of sustenance, that constant feed of news and notes and nonsense, to the point that twice as many people would pick their phone over their lunch if forced to choose. Three-quarters of 25-to-29-year-olds sleep with their phones.
If Americans have developed surprisingly intimate relationships with their gadgets, they are still modest compared with people in other ­countries. The Time Mobility Poll found that 1 in 5 Americans has asked someone on a date by text, compared with three times as many Brazilians and four times as many Chinese. Fewer than 1 in 10 married U.S. respondents admitted to using texting to coordinate adultery, vs. one-third of Indians and a majority of Chinese. It may be shocking that nearly a quarter of all U.S. respondents—­including a majority of 18-to-35-year-old men—have sent a sexually provocative picture to a partner or loved one. But that trails South Africans’ 45% and Indians’ 54%. Brazilians are especially exuberant, with 64% baring and ­sharing all.
In most respects, overseas mobile users value their devices the same way Americans do but with a few revealing exceptions. Americans are grateful for the connection and convenience their phones provide, helping them search for a lower price, navigate a strange city, expand a customer base or track their health and finances, their family and friends. But in some ways Americans are still ambivalent; more than 9 in 10 Brazilians and Indians agreed that being constantly connected is mostly a good thing. America’s 76% was actually the lowest score.
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Carve up the U.S. population into the general public vs. high-income, highly educated elites and some contrasts come into focus. Elites are more likely to say that they work longer hours and have less time to think but also that mobile has made them more efficient and productive, able to manage more, be away from the office, stay informed about the news and be a better parent. Four in 10 Americans think mobility has helped them achieve a better work-life balance, vs. three-quarters or more of Indians, Indonesians, Chinese and South Africans.
 Like any romance moving from infatuation to commitment, the connection between people and their mobile devices reflects what they brought into the relationship in the first place. In countries where connection and convenience were difficult, these mobiles offer a kind of time travel, delivering in the push of a button or touch of a screen the kind of progress other countries built over decades. Which makes you wonder: Just how much smaller and smarter and faster and better might our devices be a decade from now? And how much about our lives and work and relationships is left to be completely transformed as a result?