india

Ban Whatsapp in India – petition filed in Supreme Court

May 3, 2016 by computerera

Sudhir Yadav, an activist from Gurgaon, filed a petition in Supreme Court against Whatsapp’s strong encryption.

You may be already aware that Whatsapp introduced end-to-end encryption to the messenger application. Few people across the nation raised their voice considering the security aspects. Now slowly everything went into silence, and people adapted end-to-end encryption without any further discussions about the security.

According to the Indian encryption policy, Indian laws permit only 40-bit encryption. The government sets these norms to make investigation easy for antisocial element activities on social networking sites and messenger applications.

But contrary WhatApp introduced 256-bit Encryption, and the white papers Whatsapp released on encryption clearly indicates that it is highly impossible to decrypt messages, photos, videos exchanged through Whatsapp conversation.

While introducing encryption Whatsapp itself mentioned that they don’t store the decryption key on their server, for any message exchanged through Whatsapp.

Terrorist attacks and other antisocial activities growing rapidly in recent times. Terrorist groups using advanced technology more efficiently than normal users. Whatsapp treats end-to-end encryption as a great privacy measure for its users, but this stops the investigative agencies to solve typical antisocial activities.

The Indian Encryption Policy sets the encryption norms for cellular operators and ISPs only. As per the law technically it doesn’t effect OTT players like Whatsapp. But the Law is for the common good, when the situations demand amendments to the existing Law; OTT players will also come under the purview of the Law.

I’m eagerly waiting for the Judgement on Sudhir Yadav’s petition in the Supreme Court.

LeEco Le 1S Eco, Made for India Announced – Specifications and Price

May 3, 2016 by computerera

LeEco introduced today its latest phone model Le 1s Eco, which treated as the “Made for India” smartphone at an event organized in Mumbai. As the name suggests, the phone comes with ten popular Indian languages Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi and Oriya.

LeEco Le 1S Eco Specifications:

Screen: 5.5 inches Full HD (1080×1920) resolution with Gorilla Glass protection

Processor: 64-bit Octa-Core

RAM: 3 GB

Storage: 32 GB internal.

Camera: 13 MP f/2.0 back camera, 5 MP front camera

Battery: 3000 mAh

Supercharge: SuperCharging technology allows us to get 3 and half hours backup by charging only five mins.

Connections: WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, USB Type-C

This phone comes with a video-on-demand feature from Vidi, Eros Now, and YuppTV. You can watch more than 2000 top movies in various Indian Languages. LeEco has a partnership with YuppTV by which we can watch more than 100 Indian Channels on the phone.

If you are a music lover, LeEco comes with LeMusic app accompanied by Hungama Music. You can stream high-quality audio with a nominal package of Rs 490 per month.

Price and Availability:

This phone priced at Rs. 10,899 and will available through Flipkart Flash Sale on 12th May. Only 1,00,000 units will be available on sale on that flash sale.

As an introductory price, you can own the phone only for Rs. 9,999 on it’s first Flash Sale.

Facebook demands Court Order to remove objectionable content in India

May 3, 2016 by computerera

Facebook changed the way it honors content removal requests from various laws enforcing authorities in India.

People all over the India post a huge amount of content ranging from personal opinions to political views. There is a lot of scope for crime and criminal activity on Facebook.

Earlier Facebook considered content removal requests from the police department and other legal bodies just with the official letter signed by the concerned officer.

Now Facebook has decided to follow a different approach, now onwards it only remove the content only it gets the government or court order. This is because of the misused section 66A of the IT Act of 2000, which Supreme Court of India dismissed last year.

Section 66A has its own advantages personally I treat this section as the remedy for various online issues. But as I already said above, this section got misused a lot.

Without any proper base celebrities and popular persons in politics started to abuse the section and it finally stroked down by the Supreme Court of India.

Making Laws is not sufficient in any country, strictly following those laws with common sense is what’s needed for the better society. Here in India most of the sections in IT Act are outdated, and sometimes they have a broad meaning which can be easily abused.

Today we are seriously talking about the Facebook only, but there are a lot of social networks and other platforms emerging into the Indian technology market which becomes the platform for antisocial activities.

So as a lawmaking establishment, the government should set up expert team consists of lawyers and tech people. Otherwise, solutionless tech crimes will increase.

Facebook follows its Community Guidelines if they applicable for the content removal without the court order.

One Plus 3, will it succeed in Today’s Mobile Market?

May 1, 2016 by computerera

I am using high-end touchscreen phones since 2004 started with Sony Ericsson P900, world’s second touch screen phone in the history. From that time, I have a habit of studying a lot of technical specifications and performance factors while purchasing a smartphone for my personal needs.

There is a very limited set of phones which impressed me with their performance. “One plus One” is among one of them. When it announced two years back, I tried very hard to get “One Plus One” invitation.

I posted in various online forums to grab the invitation to purchase One plus One. But I had no luck, at last, I bought the One Plus One invitation for Rs. 1500 on Ebay. That was the old story.

Last year One plus released its successor One Plus 2. At that point of time, I had no particular interest on One plus 2. Not only me, most of the mobile lovers who waited for One Plus One earlier, didn’t show any interest on One Plus 2.

So within three months of its arrival, One Plus lifted the invite system for One plus two and placed it in the open sale. The move itself indicates the marketing failure of One +2.

Now One plus is planning to release One Plus 3 in coming weeks. But keeping the bitter experiences it faced with One +2; the mobile manufacturing company is planning to release it in the open sale. It sounds good for those who are waiting for the One +3 arrival.

On the specification front, One Plus 3 has huge list on-board. But the mobile market changed a lot if compared with the situations persists when One Plus One launched. There are a lot of mobile manufacturers who are aggressively trying to grab the market time to time with powerful configurations for budget prices. So we can’t predict how far One Plus 3 will succeed in the race. Time will reveal the success of One +3 in the existing mobile market.

Is it Indians Failure or Apple’s Failure?

April 28, 2016 by computerera

I hope you already read the comments of Apple CEO Tim Cook two days back about the Indian mobile market. He compared India with China and expressed that, India is 7-10 years behind than China concerning mobile infrastructure and other factors.

Nobody asked his opinions about India. However, he analyzed latest Apple’s downtrends in revenue. You can see the Apple’s growth rate from 2010 to till date. In 2011, Apple’s quarterly results crossed 80%, but from 2013 to 2015 first quarter the results are dramatically decreased. The main reason for this is, iPhone followed 4-inch small screen form factor even most of the world moved to larger screens.

Once iPhone 6 plus with large screen introduced in 2014 Q3, you can clearly observe the reflection of growth in the above graph.

Now coming to India, Apple performance is no way related to India’s poor network infrastructure. India has average network speed of 2 Mbps. In few cities in India like Hyderabad, we have super speed connectivity up to 250 Mbps.

Apple should learn from Facebook and Google

Tech companies need to follow strategies to expand their market. If they neglect this, starts to blame certain markets, and people in those markets, it does more harm. Time to time Facebook, Google tweak their apps and platforms to work effectively in low bandwidth markets like South Africa, India. Apple also needs to follow this.

Reasons behind Apple’s failure in India

There are many potentialities in India. That is why India is becoming the hub for Mobile phone manufacturing. The entire globe is watching latest developments in the Indian Mobile market. If Apple fails to grab market share in India, it is Apple’s mistake not India or Indian’s mistake. Here are the few reasons for Apple’s failure in India.

1. Overpricing: Apple tries to exploit their goodwill by fixing premium prices for iDevices. Few days back Apple released their latest model iPhone SE. There are no new attractive features in it.

Apple publicized iPhone SE as the budget phone. However, contrary, Apple sells it for Rs. 39,000 in India. How can anybody purchase such outdated form factor with no additional benefits for such huge price tag? Apple is following the same strategy from the beginning. It makes phones for the US market and try to market them in India and other countries.

On an average, 50% of the Indian citizens purchase new phones once in a year. That itself revealing the real potentiality of the Indian consumer market.

2. App non availability: Indians have a tendency to use any product to its full extent. Once they purchased the phone, they try to explore various apps to get things done. Because of these only tech authors like me, focus on innovative apps.

The Apple App Store has a strong approval policy for app developers. Getting approved in the App Store is not at all an easy task. Sometimes app developers withdraw their intention to publish Apps on Apple App Store.

In this context, there is a very limited set of Apps available for Indian needs in the App Store. Most of the apps available there mainly targeted to US citizens only. We cannot get popular Indian apps also at the App Store. So non-availability of local apps is also an indirect reason for Apple’s failure in India.