NDTV News

Apple readies iPhone with larger screen - sources

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:37:00 GMT

Apple Inc plans to use a larger screen on the next-generation iPhone and has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

Early production of the new screens has begun at three suppliers: Korea's LG Display, Sharp Corp and Japan Display Inc, a Japanese government-brokered merger combining the screen production of three companies.

The new iPhone screens will measure 4 inches from corner to corner, one of the sources said.

It is likely all three of the screen suppliers will get production orders from Apple, which could begin as soon as June. That would allow the new iPhone to go into production as soon as August if the company follows its own precedent in moving from orders for prototypes for key components to launch.

Apple's decision to equip the next iPhone with a larger screen represents part of its competitive response to Samsung Electronics <005930.KS>. Samsung unveiled its top-of-the line Galaxy smartphone with a 4.8-inch touch screen and a faster processor earlier this month.

Samsung, which this year became the world's largest cell phone maker, sold 45 million smartphones in the first quarter and sales of the Galaxy phones outstripped the iPhone.

Apple was not immediately available to comment.

Apple's move toward a larger display for the next generation iPhone was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012

Facebook raises size of IPO by 25 percent as investors clamour for shares

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:27:00 GMT

Facebook's owners now plan to sell 25 percent more shares in the company as investors clamour for shares in the year's hottest stock offering.

Facebook says in a regulatory filing that it will now sell about 421 million shares. That's up from 337 million previously. That doesn't include more than 60 million additional shares that could be sold to cover excess demand.

If all the shares are sold at the high end of the expected price range, the offering could total more than $18 billion. That would make Facebook one of the largest IPOs ever.

The increased size signifies heavy investor demand for the shares. It comes a day after Facebook raised the price range it expects for the stock.

The offering is expected to set the final price Thursday evening. Shares would start trading Friday.

Flipboard integrates audio with SoundCloud

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:27:00 GMT

Flipboard, the highly popular social magazine iOS app , today introduced a major update in the form of audio integration with SoundCloud. Users can now listen to podcasts, news, music and more while flipping through various sections. Flipboard has partnered with National Public Radio and Public Radio International to offer additional audio content.

Flipboard users can now access the Audio category by tapping the red ribbon on the top right corner of the app or by connecting to SoundCloud from the Accounts menu.

Once users tap the Audio option, they are greeted by a list of various segments from shows like NPR's Fresh Air, songs from artists of Atlantic Records and even original beats form Snoop Dogg. Existing SoundCloud users can also comment and like sounds directly from the app.

That's not all. When users tap on a specific genre for listening, it leads to a separate screen with the album artwork displayed in the centre and the Play button located at its bottom right. There's a music icon located on the top left corner that allows users to control their listening preferences.

Further, Flipboard has also integrated Apple's VoiceOver features to make the app accessible for the visually impaired. With VoiceOver enabled, everything on Flipboard is read out aloud.

Full release notes
Connect Flipboard to SoundCloud and enjoy amazing sounds created and shared by your friends and people you follow.
Explore dozens of recommended audio feeds in new Audio category in the Content Guide.
Accessibility for visually impaired people. Apple's VoiceOver helps users navigate Flipboard and listen to articles.
Fully localized Japanese edition of Flipboard.
Use Readability to save articles to read later.
View related sections for social networks (new on iPhone). For example, tap on the "Twitter" section title to view sections like "Your Tweets," "Your Favorites" and "Tweets Mentioning You."

Apple order report sees Samsung lose $10 billion in market value

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:28:00 GMT

Shares in Samsung Electronics Co slumped more than 6 percent on Wednesday, wiping $10 billion off the electronics giant's market value, on a report that Apple placed huge chip orders with troubled Japanese chip rival Elpida.

Taiwan's DigiTimes, an online trade news site, reported that Apple recently placed large mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) orders with Elpida's 12-inch plant in Hiroshima, Japan, securing around half the facilities total chip production. It cited unnamed industry sources in its report, which hit shares of major chip suppliers to Apple.

SK hynix shares closed almost 9 percent lower at a 20-week low - the biggest one-day drop in nine months. Samsung, the world's biggest DRAM maker, tumbled 6.2 percent to a 9-week low of 1.23 million won - the stock's biggest daily fall in nearly four years.

"It looks like Apple doesn't want to see Samsung and hynix dominate the chip market. Apple wants to maintain its bargaining power by keeping Elpida running," said Choi Do-yeon, an analyst at LIG Investment & Securities.

U.S.-based Micron Technology Corp is in talks to acquire Elpida's business as the Japanese firm tries to restructure after tough market conditions and global competition drove it into bankruptcy protection.

"A merged Micron-Elpida could pose a significant threat to South Korean memory chipmakers, and Elpida's huge order from Apple was the spark that triggered these worries," said Lim Dol-yi, an analyst at Solomon Investment & Securities.

Samsung declined to comment, as did the Japanese court-appointed trustee handling Elpida's rehabilitation.

A spokeswoman for SK hynix said: "We are receiving more orders for mobile DRAM chips from our customers." She declined to comment on whether Apple had reduced orders from the firm.

Technology shares were also impacted by a broader sell-off after talks to form a new Greek government failed, stoking concerns the country may exit the euro zone and increase financial market uncertainty. Shares in flat-screen maker LG Display slid 4.5 percent. Hyundai Motor lost 4 percent.

"Samsung shares were already facing pressure since offshore investors began cutting back on risk during the latest streak of sell-offs, but the news surrounding Elpida was the straw that broke the camel's back," said Rhoo Yong-suk, an analyst at Hyundai Securities. "It was just unfortunate timing that coincided with jitters surrounding Greece."

� Thomson Reuters 2012

India creating architecture to ensure cyber security: NSA

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:11:00 GMT

India is creating a "coherent and comprehensive" security policy to deal with the "anarchic new world" of cyber threats, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon said here Wednesday.

"(The) government is in the process of putting in place the capabilities and the systems in India that will enable us deal with this anarchic new world of constant and undeclared cyber threat, attack, counter-attack and defence," he said at the release of a report on "India's Cyber Security Challenge" by the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).

This will be a step toward the "coherent and comprehensive cyber security policy" that the report calls for, he added.

Menon noted in this context that while the National Technical Research Organisation is tasked to deal with protecting India's critical security cyber infrastructure, institutions like CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team-India) "have proved their worth during events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games when a staggering 8,000 cyber attacks were warded off.

"We are making a beginning in putting in place a system of certification and responsibility for telecommunication equipment and are working on procedures and protocols which will rationalize communication interception and monitoring," he said.

Simultaneously, "we need to harden our critical networks. And, we will develop metrices to certify and assure that our critical cyber networks, equipment and infrastructure are secure", he added.

He pointed out the need to "create a climate and environment within which security is built into our cyber and communications working methods".

All this had to be more than just a "whole-of-government" effort, Menon said.

"It must include the entire scientific and technological strength of the country, whether in laboratories, universities or in our private sector firms," Menon said.

Hoping that the report "will also bring some reason and proportion" into the discussion on cyber security, he said: "There is invariably a hullabaloo when one of our websites is hacked. But websites are meant to be hit.

"Their success is measured by how many people access or hit them. So when a website is defaced by hackers, as happened to the CBI website, it is not necessarily a security breach though it might hurt one's pride."

At the same time, Menon admitted that one reason for public concern and anxiety "is the anarchic nature of the domain of cyber space, glimpses of which naturally cause alarm.

"When this is combined with the potential effects of malicious attacks and disruptions in the cyber world upon such basic social necessities as power supplies, banking, railways, air traffic control, it is only natural that people should worry about cyber security," he added.

Menon also called for a sea change in the method of dealing with cyber war as "conflict or attacks in the cyber world do not follow the rules or logic of war as understood so far in other domains.

"In this new domain of contention war, espionage, surveillance, control and the traditional security functions, activities and crime occur but differ from those in traditional domains.

"Here we have to unlearn some of the lessons we learnt earlier. Traditional deterrence hardly works in a battle-space like the cyber world, where operations and attack occur almost at the speed of light.

"At these speeds, there is a premium on attacking first, or offense," he said.

The 95-page report, put together by a 10-member team headed by cyber expert Nitin Desai, suggests, among others, that the home ministry be made the nodal agency for dealing with cyber crime and the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) should coordinate the efforts to protect the country's critical infrastructure.

It also speaks of the need for establishing a Cyber Coordination Centre staffed by personnel from the relevant operational agencies, raising a Cyber Command and building up offensive capabilities and raising Cyber Territorial Army battalions which can provide "surge capability" to bolster India's resources during critical periods or in hostilities.

Google to expand Nexus program with Jelly Bean

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:26:00 GMT

Google is planning a major tactical change in Android strategy with the release of its next version Jelly Bean, reports Wall Street Journal. Company will partner multiple manufacturers to build several Nexus smartphones and tablets, which is a shift from company's previous practice of working with only one hardware manufacturer for a reference device.

This change can be associated with company's recent decision to revive the direct sales model for Galaxy Nexus in United States, which is reportedly going to expand with Jelly Bean release. The direct sales allow Google and hardware makers to exert more control on what apps and features go into the smartphone. Traditionally wireless carriers in countries like US and UK have controlled apps and the updates for Android devices, thus replacing even Google apps like search from the Android smartphones.

The Journal reports also claims that Mountain View now wants take its direct sales program to countries in Europe and Asia by selling smartphones and tablets via its websites and some retailers.

The plan also aims to appease hardware partners, who are wary of Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility and the fact that search giant might favour Motorola at their expense. However, under the new Nexus model, Google will be able to give early access to as many as five hardware partners including Motorola.

The next version of Android - Jelly Bean, is expected to launch later this year with new batch of Nexus devices ready for sale around Thanksgiving (on November 22 this year).

Google has not officially commented on these reports.

Zuckerberg's Facebook story is study in contrasts

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:31:00 GMT

When Hollywood set out to tell the story of how Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, it enjoyed the flexibility of portraying a man who, despite his social network's worldwide reach, was all but unknown to the public.

A year and half later, the movie "The Social Network" and the attention that followed have dispelled much of the mystery surrounding Zuckerberg, sketching out the essentials of his story line. But as Facebook promotes the vision of its 28-year-old CEO as part of this week's first-ever sale of stock to the public, one of the most striking features of his persona is the contradiction between the public and private that remains at its center.

Zuckerberg avoids questions about himself and once sued a magazine for publishing documents revealing details from his past. Yet he is the architect of a revolutionary platform built on people freely disclosing information about themselves, offering up the stuff of everyday life as worthy of the biggest stage.

"Facebook was not originally created to be a company," Zuckerberg wrote in a letter, included with a regulatory filing needed for the initial public offering. "It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected."

Zuckerberg has built Facebook, which could be valued at up to $104 billion by the stock offering, into an international phenomenon by stretching the lines of social convention and embracing a new and far more permeable definition of community. Along the way, he's proven deft at recognizing the way people use social networks, reshaping and expanding Facebook's capabilities to draw in more users.

On Friday, Facebook will begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol "FB." Zuckerberg will remain the company's largest shareholder. His personal stake in Facebook will be worth around $19 billion.

Living in a rental home even after he was a billionaire on paper, Zuckerberg isn't known for an extravagant lifestyle. He famously wears jeans, T-shirts and plain hoodies. He bought his Palo Alto, Calif., home for a reported $7 million - fancy but not outlandish for the pricey suburb near Stanford University and San Francisco. He lives there with his girlfriend, Priscilla Chen, and their Hungarian Puli dog, "Beast" (which incidentally has its own Facebook page).

Now, even as investors take a stake in Facebook, its future remains contingent on a leader who is reluctant to reveal himself.

"It's all in one guy's hands, that's what makes it so interesting," said David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect," a book chronicling Zuckerberg's story that was written with the cooperation of the man and his company. "It is a one-man show."

Zuckerberg, who grew up in the New York suburb of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., began writing computer code when he was 10 on an Atari computer, devising games and enlisting friends to do the graphics. As a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy, he and a friend created a Web tool called Synapse that built personalized music playlists by automatically determining listener's preferences. Microsoft reportedly offered the pair nearly $1 million, but they turned it down.

Soon after arriving at Harvard in 2003, Zuckerberg created a site called Coursematch that allowed students to choose classes by showing what their classmates were doing. Then, in the fall of his sophomore year, he hacked into the online "facebooks" of Harvard's residential halls to create Facemash, a site that encouraged students to rank their classmates' looks.

The university's Administrative Board called him in for a hearing, but let him remain at the school.

In early 2004, former classmates said, the normally sociable Zuckerberg all but vanished for a week, emerging from his room to urge his friends to join a new creation called The Facebook.

Stephanie Camaglia Reznick, then a freshman at Harvard who was the 92nd to sign up, said Zuckerberg quickly gained notoriety. She recalled when, arriving for the first day of a discussion group for an introductory psychology class, eyebrows went up when Zuckerberg's turn came to introduce himself.

"Someone said, 'Great, you're the Facebook guy!' And he was so embarrassed," says Reznick, now a medical student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "He really played it down."

Classmate James Oliver recalls a conversation in the dorm soon after, when Zuckerberg - he and others still refer to him as "Zuck" - explained that he had worked to launch Facebook quickly to show up a Harvard administrator who had said a university-wide online directory would take two years to create. By the end of the semester, Facebook had nearly 160,000 users.

But three fellow Harvard students quickly took issue with Zuckerberg's creation. Identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and friend Divya Narendra said they had hired Zuckerberg to write computer code for their own social networking site in November 2003, and that he had stolen their idea.

The dispute over Facebook's beginnings - which the company settled by paying the trio $65 million - is far from unique.

"Being first is heavily overrated in the technology space because all really good ideas end up being collaborative. ... It's the execution that matters," said Paul Saffo, of the San Francisco analysis firm Discern.

In the summer after his sophomore year, Zuckerberg left Harvard for a rented house in Silicon Valley to build Facebook, expanding it to other campuses and then across the globe with venture funding from Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal. Each time it seemed to plateau, Zuckerberg revamped it to create new utility and sources of entertainment. He turned down an offer from Yahoo! to buy the company for $1 billion.

As it has grown into a phenomenon, Facebook has repeatedly sparked privacy concerns from critics concerned about its push to get users to reveal more personal information. But Zuckerberg, the face of Facebook, has offered up relatively little about himself.

The bubble was breached in 2007 when 02138, a now defunct magazine for Harvard alumni, published a lengthy story about the dispute over Facebook's beginnings. The magazine obtained court files that were supposed to be sealed and posted documents on its website, including Zuckerberg's application to Harvard and long-ago postings from his online journal. Richard Bradley, the executive editor of the magazine, said the documents revealed details including Zuckerberg's social security number and financial data from Facebook's first year.

Facebook sued, seeking a court order to have the documents removed.

"They shed some insight into Zuckerberg which he clearly did not want people to see," Bradley said. "Our lawyer conveyed to us the strong sense from his communication with Facebook's law firm that Facebook's lawyers were not entirely enthusiastic about pursuing this litigation, but that Zuckerberg himself was livid."

Facebook's request was denied and the documents circulated freely on the Web, with little other information available to counter the portrait of Zuckerberg they offered. Some of those who know him say the perceptions are misguided. Rather than being some kind of anti-social genius, his success was based on the fact that he liked people and was well liked, they say.

Kirkpatrick, who wrote the book on Facebook, said Zuckerberg's true genius is understanding how, in a new age, people and computers can interact.

"Zuckerberg thought, 'I want to take the fact that transparency and sharing are the future," he said, "and build technology that takes that for granted.'"

Move over Kutcher, the official Steve Jobs movie is here

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:51:00 GMT

Ashton Kutcher may have started filming for Jobs, the indie movie based on life of the marquee Apple co-founder, but looks like he'll not be the only Steve Jobs in town.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Sony has bought the rights to make Walter Isaacson's official biography Steve Jobs into a film by the same name. The book will be adapted into a script by Aaron Sorkin, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind The Social Network, A Few Good Men and The West Wing.

As per the report, Sony paid $1 million way back in October to land the movie rights for the best selling biography. It looks like Sony is in no rush to make the movie and Kutcher's indie movie will be out long before Sony's. As for the audience, they are in for a double treat.

Greenpeace activists arrested outside Apple

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:22:00 GMT

Two Greenpeace activists were arrested after being pried from a giant iPod in front of Apple's headquarters Tuesday during a protest against using dirty energy to power datacenters.

The protesters had locked themselves inside an eight-foot (2.4-meter) tall, ten-foot (three-meter) wide survival pod previously used during demonstrations to stop oil drilling in the Arctic. Greenpeace confirmed the arrests but could not immediately confirm the charges.

The activists were broadcasting recorded messages urging Apple to use clean energy instead of climate change culprit coal for electricity to power online services such as iCloud data storage, according to Greenpeace.

"Apple's executives have thus far ignored the hundreds of thousands of people asking them to use their influence for good by building a cloud powered by renewable energy," said Greenpeace USA executive director Phil Radford.

"As Apple's customers, we love our iPhones and iPads, but we don't want to use an iCloud fueled by the smog of dirty coal pollution."

The protest began late Monday with activists projecting pictures, Twitter messages and Facebook posts from supporters of a "Clean Our Cloud" campaign onto walls of Apple's headquarters in the California city of Cupertino.

Apple employees arriving for work in the morning were greeted by four protesters wearing iPhone costumes with giant screens displaying similar messages, according to Greenpeace International spokesman David Pomerantz.

"The costumes are pretty hilarious, so I'm seeing a lot of smiles and laughs," Pomerantz said of reactions by arriving Apple workers.

Apple did not reply to requests for comment.

More than 215,000 people have reportedly signed a Clean Our Cloud petition since the campaign launched last month with the release of a report grading major technology firms on the use of renewable energy sources.

Amazon, Apple and Twitter were graded poorly in a Greenpeace study of technology titans' use of clean energy to power the mushrooming Internet cloud, but Facebook, Google and Yahoo! won praise.

The environmental charity's report, billed as a rallying cry instead of a critique, related the companies' use of data centers and other energy issues.

Both Amazon and Microsoft datacenters rely heavily on "dirty and dangerous coal and nuclear power," according to the report.

Greenpeace called on all technology firms using datacenters to provide online software or services to be more open about energy use and to shift to non-polluting sources of power.

Diablo III finally hits shelves after twelve years

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:02:00 GMT

Fans of Diablo III celebrated the midnight launch of the long-awaited video game.

A crowd of more than 1,500 gathered Monday night around a stage built underneath the Ferris wheel at the Irvine Spectrum Center, a shopping center located about a mile from developer Blizzard Entertainment Inc.'s headquarters, for the gritty role-playing sequel set in the fantastical world of Sanctuary.

Anticipation for Diablo III from publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. has bubbled over because the previous entry in the series was released 12 years ago, a lifetime in the gaming world when compared with franchises like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, which regularly receive updates.

"When we first started doing midnight launches, we didn't think anyone would come, but now we do them for all our games, and they get bigger and bigger," said Rob Pardo, Blizzard's vice president of game design. "It's great for not only the fans but also the development team. They get to be here when everyone is buying the game and see the excitement."

Diablo fans huddled around the stage to watch Blizzard artists sketch characters from scratch, view never-before-seen footage, take part in trivia contests and attempt to catch free swag during "loot storms."

Ian Noble, 24, wanted his collector's edition autographed by developers.

"There's nowhere I'd rather be tonight," Noble said. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long, long time."

So why did it take so long?

"We were just goofing off mostly," joked lead designer Jay Wilson over howls from the crowd. "No, it takes a long time to make a Blizzard game. We're very focused on quality. If we think something is not good enough, we make it better. We redo things, which is really uncommon in game development. If we build a level and don't like (it), we'll throw it out."

In the third chapter of "Diablo," players choose among five classes - barbarian, demon hunter, monk, witch doctor or wizard - and battle hellish minions across the landscape of Sanctuary.

Wilson hopes new sprawling battlefields, real-money auctions, a deeper combat system and increased online capabilities for "Diablo III" will appease even the frustrated fans.

"If we could have done anything different, we probably wouldn't have announced the game when we did," said Wilson. "We could have waited a little longer. We thought we were closer to release. We want people to get excited, but we don't want them to feel like they're strung along. We always try to have a dialogue with the audience and exceed their expectations."

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhati said Diablo III, only available to play on PC and Mac computers, not game consoles, has the potential to sell more than 4 million copies. He estimated Blizzard would sell 3.5 million copies this year. "Diablo II," released in the summer of 2000, sold 4 million copies in the year after it debuted.

Sony Xperia S ICS update coming in early-June

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:58:00 GMT

Sony has confirmed on the company support forum that Xperia S will get the Ice Cream Sandwich update in late May/early June as scheduled. The update will be pushed over-the-air as well via PC Companion software.

Launched last month in India, Sony Xperia S is company flagship smartphone for this year and is currently running on Android 2.3. The upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich update is expected to bring several performance improvements to the smartphone.

Company has already started rolling-out Android 4.0 updates for select Xperia models from company's 2011 line-up and others are expected to get it in the coming months.

To remind you, Sony Xperia is powered by 1.5GHz dual core processor and features 4.3 inch HD display, 1GB of RAM and 12.1MP rear camera. It retails for Rs. 30,999 in the country.

Zuckerberg's former assistant lands memoir deal

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:48:00 GMT

An early Facebook employee and former assistant to Mark Zuckerberg will have a memoir out this summer.

Katherine Losse, who joined the social network giant back in 2005 and remained for five years has a deal for "The Boy Kings: A Journey into the Heart of the Social Network." The Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Tuesday that the book will come out June 26. Losse will offer a first-hand account of "the vision, culture, and tactics of the hackers, venture capitalists, and Ivy League grads" who helped make Facebook a worldwide force.

Losse left Facebook in 2010 on "friendly terms," according to the Free Press. At Facebook, she was a writer and researcher.

Asia helps drive Facebook's 1-billion goal

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:35:00 GMT

As Facebook nears saturation levels in some Western countries, Asian users are helping drive the social-networking leader's march on the 1-billion-user milestone and beyond.

The Facebook-led social-networking phenomenon has profoundly impacted the region -- challenging conservative ideals, connecting diaspora communities and allowing users to circumvent authoritarian information controls.

That impact looks set to deepen as Asia's huge population flocks to Facebook, representing a vital growth market for CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm-room creation as it readies for this week's hotly anticipated IPO.

More than one in four of Facebook's estimated 900 million-plus users are in Asia -- India's 45 million community and Indonesia's 42 million rank third and fourth worldwide behind the United States and Brazil.

In the past half-year, new users have grown 20 percent in India, 65 percent in Japan and 56 percent in South Korea, according to social media tracking website socialbakers.com.

"For the Facebook platform itself, Asia is wildly important. But in terms of the future of the platform, it is even more important," said Tom Crampton, head of Asian social media for advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather.

Facebook has steamrolled rivals Friendster and MySpace in Asia, fueled by factors including the long-distance communication needs of the hundreds of millions of migrant labourers from India, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere who work abroad in the region.

But social-networking sites have also enabled users to challenge social strictures and break information monopolies, forcing governments to take notice.

Discontent aired online in tightly controlled Singapore last year was a major factor in the ruling party's worst polls showing in its five decades in power.

In Malaysia, whose users on average have the most "friends" of any country, according to a 2010 survey by a global research firm, Facebook and other platforms were used to pump up turnout for pro-democracy protests by tens of thousands last month, and to criticise a tough police response.

Meanwhile, premier Najib Razak has repealed some authoritarian laws in a campaign widely seen at winning over the increasingly vocal online population.

Asian governments and corporations are being forced to listen and respond, said Yasir Yousuff, managing director of NM Incite, the social media arm of market research firm Nielsen.

"(Singapore and Malaysia showed) Facebook and social media have played a huge part in providing a platform for people to voice their feelings and create symbolic actions that can help rally people to the cause," he said.

In China, Facebook and other Western social media are blocked by Communist authorities but have inspired Chinese clones that -- while heavily censored -- have been used to channel public pressure on the government.

Conservative Asian mores also have been challenged in countries such as Muslim Indonesia, where Facebook is a popular way to find romantic partners across the nation of 17,000 islands, angering religious authorities.

"Asians are not as aggressive at networking in person as an American or European might be. Facebook has really tapped into that psyche that you can easily form groups of like-minded people," said Napoleon Biggs, head of digital media for Asia at marketing firm Fleishman Hillard.

Challenges remain for Facebook in Asia.

Besides China, India's potential is crimped by poor infrastructure and low Internet penetration while domestic Japanese and South Korean rivals pose stiff competition in those markets.

But rich potential remains, according to Nielsen.

It said in a recent report that consumers in developing Asian markets like Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia spend far more time online than their developed-country counterparts for everything from watching video content to researching purchasing decisions.

For Facebook, the future in Asia will depend heavily on its ability to capitalise on the region's famed affinity for the mobile phone, analysts said.

Friendster was tops in Indonesia -- where mobile Web access dominates -- until Facebook's application for Blackberry took off in the past few years.

"Almost overnight, it went from being a Friendster nation to a Facebook nation. Mobile is a great untapped revenue source for Facebook in Asia," Crampton said.

Garmin launches new GPS devices in India, starting Rs. 8450

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:17:00 GMT

US-based GPS device maker Garmin today said it is targeting to increase its share in the personal navigation devices (PND) market to 30 percent by December-end as it is expanding the product portfolio and operations in the country.

"We have a 15 percent share in the PND market in the country at present. We are targeting to increase our share to 30 percent by the end of December," Garmin Nation Sales and Marketing Head Ali Rizvi said. The PND market in India is estimated to be 1 lakh units in 2011-12 and is expected to grow to 1.5-2 lakh units in the current fiscal.

Garmin also launched two new devices - nuvi 40LM and 50LM - targeting the "affordable market segment".

The 40LM (with a 4.3 inch screen) and 50LM (with a 5 inch screen) are priced at Rs. 8,450 and Rs. 9,990, respectively, and come with free lifetime maps, "taking away the recurring cost and make the devices much more affordable in the long run," Rizvi added.

The company aims to sell about 20,000 units of the two devices till the year-end. The devices will come with free maps of Singapore and Malaysia. Garmin would also be expanding its footprint in India and by 2013 aims to have offices in Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai. It opened a office in Delhi this month.

HTC One X, EVO 4G LTE U.S. sales delayed due to customs review

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:50:00 GMT

U.S. sales of two new smartphones from Taiwan's HTC Corp will be delayed due to a patent dispute with Apple Inc , a fresh blow to the company as it tries to turn around declining sales in what was once its largest market.

The news knocked its shares down 5 percent.

Apple scored a narrow victory against HTC in a patent lawsuit in December over technology in the smartphones, one of many such disputes in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.

HTC said in a statement on Wednesday that "the U.S. availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC (International Trade Commission) exclusion order".

Under that ruling, HTC phones with the disputed technology would be banned from entering the U.S. from April 19. HTC has said that it has a workaround in its new phones to avoid the technology. The shipments still require inspection however.

Some shipments of the One X model had reached the U.S. before the ban date, enabling the model's launch, but further shipments are being delayed, an HTC official in Taipei said.

U.S. operator AT&T, which has been carrying the One X model in store since May 6, says the smartphone is "out of stock" on its website.

The launch of the EVO 4G LTE by Sprint, originally scheduled for Friday, will be delayed. Sprint has been taking pre-orders on its website.

In its statement, HTC said it believes it is "in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with customs to secure approval". Sprint and AT&T both declined to comment.

As of 0405 GMT, HTC shares were down 4.6 percent in a broader market down 1.3 percent.

"Previously, it was expected that general exclusion order from the patent infringement referred to only old models from HTC. However, the latest news suggest otherwise with all models (new and old) potentially at risk," Goldman Sachs said in a trading note to clients seen by Reuters.

It said the U.S. market was expected to account for 15-20 percent of HTC's second-quarter shipments, and this delay might hit the company's earnings this quarter and possibly in the third quarter, depending on how quickly HTC could resolve the issue.

Last month, HTC Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou said HTC would not return to the days when more than 50 percent of its revenue came from the United States, a market where it saw a big drop last year because of the fierce competition from Apple's iPhone 4S.

Former contract maker HTC had a fairytale ride in 2010 and early 2011, when its shares more than tripled in the 14 months to April 2011. The company's sales grew four-fold in 1-1/2 years as consumers snapped up its innovative phones with their distinctive large clock numerals.

But it suffered an equally rapid fall from grace as its phones failed to keep up with Apple's AAPL.O iPhones and Samsung's 005930.KS Galaxy range.

In late February, HTC announced its One series of models with fast graphic chips and advanced music and photography functions, to generally positive reviews from analysts and tech bloggers.

� Thomson Reuters 2012