by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : If you belong to the generation that played platform games like “Mario”, “Street Fighter” and “Pacman” in the nineties — bunking classes and hiding from parents who fumed at your late arrivals — you will probably be more tolerant of today’s kids playing games on smartphones, laptops or consoles.
Of late, gaming has broken the social tolerance barrier and new parents look at this piece of technology quite liberally — willing to spend hard-earned money on buying high-end gaming devices for their kids.
The fact is that those who have played strategy games on mobiles are striving for a better immersive experience which has given a thrust to high-end PC gaming in the country.
According to a recent joint report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and TechSci Research, the Indian gaming industry that was valued at $543.08 million in 2016 is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.61 per cent, in value terms, over the next five years.
Valued at $84.40 million, the computer gaming segment accounted for a share of 15.54 per cent in the gaming market in 2016. Core gamers who do not intend to move to console gaming and make additional investments are today driving the PC gaming industry in the country.
In this scenario, global PC and printer major HP Inc is trying to anticipate consumer needs and upcoming trends to introduce PC gaming technology that has the potential to disrupt the industry.
Targeted at entry-level gamers, the company introduced its gaming range in India over a year ago.
“With the proliferation of smartphones, gaming as a concept was picking up and we felt that the market was ready for PC gaming. Millennials are using their devices not only for gaming but leveraging the powerful machines for other purposes as well,” Vickram Bedi, Senior Director-Personal Systems, HP Inc India, told IANS.
Gaming in the country has seen widespread adoption by various streams, especially for learning and development. “The gamification has seen a lot of traction in the past year or so and is likely to pick up with more and more organisations using it for training, education and skill development, etc,” Bedi noted.
HP Inc, with its “Omen” series, has become one of the leading PC gaming brands in India. Buoyed by the response, HP last month introduced a reinvented “Omen X” gaming PC portfolio that offers best design, form-factor, engineering and performance for the gamers.
There has been an increase in popularity for online PC gaming owing to the increasing interest of gamers towards eSports and other competitive electronic games.
eSports drew 258 million unique viewers globally last year, says global research firm SuperData, adding that the esports industry will top $2 billion in revenue by 2021.
Sensing the opportunities, another key player, Dell, has strengthened its PC gaming portfolio.
“We have seen tremendous growth in the gaming industry. Dell has led this space with the most comprehensive and diverse product portfolio encompassing ‘Alienware’ and ‘Inspiron’ gaming. Additionally, as eSports graduates as a trend in many global markets, it is also catching up in India,” Ritu Gupta, Marketing Director (India and ANZ), Dell Consumer & Small Business, told IANS.
“At Dell, we aim to separate the regular notebook user from the gamers, or rather create a user who is a gamer,” she added.
To provide seamless, lag-free gaming, hardware has also taken a giant leap. Newer hardware technology developments are engaging consumers with more interactive and cinematic experience.
“We see a huge potential for gaming laptops in India as the hardware components are becoming more compact and powerful day-by-day, making laptops lighter, sleeker and more compact,” Chandrahas Panigrahi, CMO and Consumer Business Head, Acer India, told IANS.
With hardware playing a prime role, the performance gap between desktops and laptops is fast narrowing.
“A couple of factors like weight, size and noise that were a major challenge earlier are now being steamed out,” Panigrahi added.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Acer emerged as the leading brand in India in the fourth quarter of 2017, with 25.4 per cent market share in the gaming laptops segment and 41.9 per cent share in gaming monitors.
Acer’s “Predator” and “Nitro” gaming series are very popular among Indian youth.
As the social milieu changes in the favour of gaming, PC gaming players now need to introduce better, realistic games along with bringing down the cost of gaming desktops and laptops to tap mobile gamers who currently generate 50 per cent in revenue for the industry.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : It was the perfect photo-op when Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a town-hall meeting at the social media giant’s sprawling headquarters at Menlo Park, California, in September 2015.
With Facebook now embroiled in a massive data breach controversy, the bonhomie appears to be over, with India warning Zuckerberg of “stringent action”, including summoning him over the “misuse” of data to allegedly influence the country’s electoral process.
Zuckerberg has recently said Facebook will ensure that its platform is not misused to influence elections in India and elsewhere, but after witnessing how social media platforms were infiltrated during the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK, nothing can be predicted at this point of time.
While governments the world over are fast formulating new laws that deal with users’ data security and privacy, and the spread of false news, India lags far behind on this front.
Is the country prepared in case a huge data security or privacy breach hits its people?
According to top cyber law experts, India as a nation has missed the broader point in the ever-changing tech landscape.
“The moot point here is: How do we regulate mobile app providers, social media players and intermediaries in terms of handling and processing the users’ data? We don’t have a data protection law in place. We neither have a national law on cyber security nor a national law on privacy,” Pavan Duggal, the nation’s leading cyber law expert, told IANS.
The absence of these critical laws has created a very fertile ground for the misuse and unauthorised access of users’ data by the service providers.
“On top of it, India has not revisited its stand on intermediaries’ liabilities since 2008. Also, the service providers have been given a great fillip by a judgement of the Supreme court, where the service providers are directed not to take any action till such time they get a court or a government agency order,” Duggal informed.
In such a scenario, service providers are using the “Indians’ data with impunity”.
“They are transferring them outside the territorial boundaries of the country because we as a nation are sleeping. Once the data goes outside the country, the government loses all control. This has a detrimental impact on the protection and preservation of people’s data privacy and personal privacy,” Duggal stressed.
India has to learn from the European Union (EU) when it comes to formulating a legal framework to secure data.
The EU has asked businesses and service providers globally to comply with its new privacy law — the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — that comes into force from May 25 this year.
The EU GDPR has been designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe — to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy and to reshape the way organisations across the region approach data privacy.
After four years of debate, the GDPR was finally approved by the EU Parliament on April 14, 2016. Organisations that fail to comply with the new regulation will face hefty fines.
Although a white paper on data security has been published by the Indian government for all the stakeholders to deliberate upon, the country is still working on drafting a data protection bill.
“India is woefully under-prepared to address issues of data protection and cyber-security. We need a data protection law that protects citizens from misuse of data with strict liability and extremely high statutory damages that must be awarded within a strict period of time,” said Mishi Choudhary, President and Legal Director of New Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC.in), a not-for-profit organisation.
According to Duggal, also a noted Supreme Court lawyer, India should not cut-paste any other country’s law as it has to deal with a different set of problems.
“India’s social realities are entirely different. The country has to deal with the huge issue of Aadhaar which is reeling under variety of cyber attacks because we have failed to apply cyber security as an integral part of the Aadhaar architecture,” Duggal told IANS.
India’s approach has to be based from its soil and the country must strive for data localisation.
“India should not allow its data to be stored outside its boundaries. Service providers must (be made to pay) high penalty if they are found to be misusing the data of Indians irrespective of if they are physically located in the country or not,” Duggal said.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : Aiming to help domestic smartphone manufacturers recover lost ground, the government has taken several measures in the recent past, like easing norms for local manufacturing and hiking customs duty on mobile phones.
The efforts, however, have brought little cheer for the beleaguered local vendors, as Chinese players — now a dominant force — have begun manufacturing/assembling nearly 100 per cent of their products being sold in the country.
The collective market share of China-based vendors — especially Xiaomi, Vivo, Lenovo, OPPO and Huawei (Honor) — in India stands at 53 per cent in 2017, says International Data Corporation (IDC).
According to Counterpoint Research, the combined market share of four top Indian brands — Micromax, Lava, Intex and Karbonn — was a mere 12.5 per cent last year.
Domestic players do take cognizance of the government’s efforts, but realise the strength of the Chinese vendors when it comes to providing superlative user-experience at affordable prices — and robust distribution networks and mass-scale indigenous production.
“China-based vendors are producing handsets that give enhanced experience to the Indian consumers which is not being provided by the domestic manufacturers. Most of the Chinese vendors are now manufacturing and locally sourcing parts so they are not affected by changes in the policy,” Jaipal Singh, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India, told IANS.
Chinese vendors are very aggressive when it comes to market expansion. Backed by top-of-the-line innovation, they know the game when it comes to product line-up, distribution network and presence in both online and offline segments.
Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint, believes the issues which local brands are facing have more to do with their target audience than anything else.
“While Chinese players are able to attract new users across different price bands, the Indian players have largely been restricted to the sub-Rs 6,000 price category. On top of it, they are heavily outspent by Chinese brands in terms of marketing and advertising,” Pathak told IANS.
Four-five years back, when smartphone players like Sony, HTC and Samsung were ruling the roost, local mobile accessories distributors sensed the immense opportunity and launched affordable handsets.
In the 2013-2014 period, the domestic brands quickly gained traction and enjoyed 40-45 per cent market share — till the time Chinese behemoths entered the fray.
Indian players feel that lack of a level-playing field in terms of cost of capital, logistics or production has hampered their prospects.
“In China, every state has a separate budget to support local manufacturers, apart from what the central government offers. There are several problems local manufacturers are facing in India while operating businesses in the states,” Nidhi Markanday, Director, Intex Technologies, told IANS.
“A separate budget would help local manufacturers attract new businesses, apart from adding positive impact on the ease of doing business agenda of the government,” she added.
In addition, the Intex executive stressed, local manufacturers must be incentivised in order to achieve economies of scale and exports of electronics, including mobiles and accessories.
The government has already come up with a phased manufacturing plan to boost indigenous production of mobile phones by providing tax relief and other incentives on components and accessories used for the devices.
In this scenario, Sanjeev Agarwal, Chief Manufacturing Officer, LAVA International, is still confident of growth despite fierce competition.
“We believe that the appropriate way to handle competition is to play on your strengths. Our biggest strength is that being an Indian multinational company, we understand the pulse of the consumers well. We understand the market dynamics and the requirements of the Indian consumers,” Agarwal told IANS.
For 2017, Micromax had 5.4 per cent market share, followed by Lava at 2.6 per cent, Intex at 2.5 per cent and Karbonn at 2 per cent. Xiaomi alone had 20.9 per cent market share for the entire year.
“We have several strategic tie-ups in the e-commerce space as well. These have been our strengths, helping us to maintain good growth despite tough competition. Counting on these advantages, I am confident of maintaining and further reinforcing our presence in the market,” Agarwal hoped.
In order to make a real comeback, said Pathak, local brands need to scale up the price bands by targeting a multi-channel distribution approach and introducing key features at a similar pace, if not faster, than the Chinese competitors.
“This will not happen overnight and till that time, they need to play to their strengths, which means capturing a larger pie of the sub-$75 (less than Rs 5,000) segment,” Pathak added.
Here, domestic brands now have to deal with another local giant — Reliance JioPhone. With 27 percent market share (by shipment), Reliance JioPhone became the leading feature phone brand in the country in the fourth quarter last year.
“In a value-conscious market like India, another option is to partner big telcos and offer bundled products with free data. This will give the Indian vendors some base going forward,” added Singh.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Markets, Startup Basics, Technology, World
By Nishant Arora,
Los Angeles : Although supersonic travel bade goodbye over a decade ago with Concorde, a US-based start-up, Boom, is now developing a jetliner that will fly nearly 75 people — at the cost of a business class ticket — from New York to London in a little over three hours in 2023.
Boom supersonic airliner will aim to fly at Mach 2.2 (more than double the speed of sound) and cut flight times to half — 2.6 times faster than the current airlines.
Los Angeles-based Arrivo Corporation, that aims to commercialise the Hyperloop technology, is building fast corridors — starting from Denver, Colorado, in 2019 — that will drastically reduce travel time by road.
Brent Bushnell, who calls himself the nerdiest nerd on Earth, is creating “mad engineering projects” to teach kids science and robotics at his LA-based engineering and entertainment start-up Two Bit Circus, that offers tequila clouds, flame tanks and robot bartenders.
These start-ups have one thing in common: SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE solutions offered by the French 3D Experience major Dassault Systemes that are providing wings to their ideas.
Mike Jagemann, Head of XB-1 (XB-1 supersonic prototype is scheduled to fly this year) at Boom Supersonic, first learned SOLIDWORKS in college as part of a competitive aerospace team.
At one of the sessions, Jagemann explained that Boom is using SOLIDWORKS to design the entire aircraft — not just pieces of fuselage or the interior but the complete package, including computer-aided design (CAD), product data management (PDM), simulation and Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR).
“Coming to the SOLIDWORKS conference is to connect with the best designers in the business who can help Boom take a giant leap. It’s a great place to grow your career,” Jagemann told the audience at one of the sessions.
Emerging start-ups are fast embracing SOLIDWORKS to design things that will change the future — from transportation to healthcare.
According to Ryan Kraft, an engineer from Arrivo, people who live in urban areas spend an average of 100 hours a year in traffic and the US loses billions of dollars as a result.
The company is using SOLIDWORKS and 3DEXPERIENCE solutions to design a high-speed super urban network to move people around cities.
The Arrivo network would have a magnetised track that parallels existing freeways. The system could support existing vehicles as well as cargo sleds and its own specially-designed vehicles.
According to Kraft, the company selected a minimum set of tools and processes to enable quick yet accurate manufacturing and testing, and will add in further toolsets and processes as they move to a production mindset.
“The company will spend the next 18 months to two years focusing on moving forward with technology, partners and customers… with doubling its engineering staff,” Kraft said.
British engineering company Gilo Industries is using SOLIDWORKS to design the “Mako” jetboard for water surfing.
According to its founder Gilo Cardoza, while the concept of a jetboard has been around since the 1930s, no one has ever done it really well.
“It needed to be lightweight, like a surfboard, and travel fast. The Mako goes 56 km per hour, has a 12-horsepower engine and goes from zero to 35 in 2.8 seconds. Using SOLIDWORKS, we went from art to finished product in just 12 months,” Cardoza told the gathering.
For Bushnell from Two Bit Circus, the best immersive experience is not a smartphone or a laptop — but real life.
“Engagement is the key to creative design. There’s no experience more immersive than real life and everyone in the SOLIDWORKS community has the tools and skills to create something innovative, engaging and memorable,” he noted.
When it comes to healthcare, Kyoungchul “KC” Kong, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Sogang University in South Korea and CEO and founder of SG Robotics, has developed wearable robotics to help those in need of assistive technologies.
“Angelegs” is one such wearable robot system that helps paraplegic people walk.
According to Neri Oxman, a designer and professor at MIT’s Mediated Matter Lab, we are in the middle of the transition from the “age of the machines” to the “age of organisms”.
“In the ‘age of the machines’, 3D printing processes worked with voxels, but in the ‘age of organisms’, this information won’t be captured in binary systems but in systems based on genetic codes,” she noted, adding that the “Bio-digital” age will enable manufacturers to 3D-print organic materials.
“We all share a big dream and, most importantly, we have the knowledge, talent, character and determination to make things happen. Let’s make a better world for everyone,” reiterated Gian Paolo Bassi, SOLIDWORKS CEO.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
New Delhi : A team of surgeons from Medanta: The Medicity, Gurugram, last year successfully implanted a 3D-printed vertebra in a 32-year-old woman — helping her walk again after a bout of disabling spinal tuberculosis.
The 10-hour-long surgery was the first-of-its-kind for reconstruction with a 3D-printed titanium implant in India, and third in the world.
Not just healthcare, 3D printing, or Additive Manufacturing (AM), has the potential to transform many industries in the years to come and sensing the mammoth opportunities, key players are now arriving in India with their 3D solutions and technologies.
Although in a nascent stage, market intelligence solutions firm 6Wresearch predicts that India’s 3D printer prototyping and materials market will hit $79 million by 2021.
In a bid to take industrial manufacturing in India to a new level, printing and PC major HP Inc this month brought its acclaimed Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D Printers to India.
“While verticals like automotive, defence and manufacturing in general will be the key focus for us, healthcare is a promising area for HP Inc in the long term in India,” Sumeer Chandra, Managing Director, HP Inc India, told IANS.
Starting from Rs 2.4 crore, the HP printing solution includes pre- and post-processing unit, the 3D printer and initial consumables.
According to Alexandre Lalumiere, Director, Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) 3D Printing, 3D printing is the building block when it comes to transforming healthcare.
“Industry is yet to fully understand what this technology can achieve — but beyond prototyping, the firms are now looking at building customised implants, prosthetics and fixtures that will transform regenerative medicine globally, including in India,” Lalumiere told IANS.
Global spending in 3D healthcare printing has grown exponentially in the last couple of years.
Riding on growing R&D investments and improved healthcare infrastructure associated with the development of 3D printing products, the healthcare 3D printing market globally is forecast to hit $2.2 billion by 2024, says Global Market Insights Inc.
According to Samson Khaou, Managing Director, Dassault Systemes India Pvt Ltd, in today’s complex and competitive global marketplace, Indian companies are striving to be a recognisable force that can offer the best “price-to-performance” offering.
“3D Printing takes companies a step ahead in this competitive journey. For example, an automobile component manufacturer was able to reduce materials requirements by approximately 35 per cent when virtual testing revealed routes to a better, stronger, light-weighted design,” Khaou told IANS.
In another case, a waste treatment provider cut design cycles and development costs by 40 per cent while reducing the time to market by 50 per cent, he added.
Dassault Systemes is hearing a lot about 3D printing — whether it is to print a prosthetic arm, or designing the favourite chocolate toppings, manufacturing a bridge on-site, or even printing an entire car.
“This technology is effectively used in manufacturing process in the aviation and automotive industry and can enhance production times as well as product performance in terms of strength, weight and environmental impact — improvements that are impossible to obtain with traditional methods,” the Dassault Systemes executive emphasised.
Imaginarium, an Indian 3D printing and prototyping company, is catering to a number of industries like healthcare, jewellery, and automotive and consumer products.
“We are working with medical specialists to bring personalised healthcare solutions. Using MRI scan, we can recreate internal organs like heart or kidney in 3D so that a doctor has a tangible organ to test on before the surgery,” said Tanmay Shah, Head of innovations at Imaginarium.
The technology can be used to create implants and prosthetics and with growing consumer demand, there will soon be mass scale customisation in India when it comes to 3D printing.
“In India, there is a certain level of technology R&D happening in academic institutions as well as start-ups, who are working on building their own machines. But compared to the world, we are still some distance away from making industrial-grade 3D printing machines,” Shah noted.
Meanwhile, Dassault Systemes is planning to roll out a “Marketplace” on Additive Manufacturing.
“The Marketplace will enable 3D printing of the product that can be delivered to a customer’s location with the click of a button. The solution will be (useful) for all businesses: Small and mid-sized, entrepreneurs, and also large enterprises that want to improve their marketplace mechanisms to improve training in their departments,” Khaou told IANS.
(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in )
—IANS
