Vivo, the global premium smartphone brand, today unveiled Vivo X21, its latest flagship with industry-first In-Display Fingerprint Scanning Technology. A remarkable leap in global technology, Vivo X21 leads the industry with its disruptive unlocking technology, making it more safe and secure for its consumers.Priced at Rs 35,990 the device will be available from May 29, 2018 onwards.
Vivo X21 Specifications
· 15.95cm (6.28) FHD+
· Dual Rear Camera (12 MP + 5 MP)
· 12 MP Selfie Camera
· 19:9 FullViewTM display
· Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 Octa Core
· 6 GB RAM/128 GB ROM
· 3200mAh battery
· Android 8.1
Priced at Rs 35,990, the Vivo X21 will be available in black colour across selected offline stores from 29th May’18. The device will be available online on flipkart.com and shop.vivo.com/in with exciting launch offers.
Commenting on the launch, Kent Cheng, CEO, Vivo India said, “Vivo has consistently pursued innovation to solve consumer pain points. With evolving consumer preferences, innovation has become a cornerstone for success in the smartphone market. Pushing the innovation threshold, Vivo has successfully pioneered the secure and intuitive In-Display Fingerprint Scanning technology. We are proud to bring this industry-first feature to the Indian market with the Vivo X21.”
Your Fingerprint to the Future
Vivo X21 switches the rear fingerprint sensor with the latest In-Display Fingerprint Scanning Technology to maintain the sleek and unified design of the smartphone. As soon as the user touches the screen, the OLED display gets activated to illuminate the finger. The optical fingerprint sensor under the OLED display recognizes and captures the reflected light from the unique fingerprint pattern which is processed by the sensor for authentication.
All-New FullView Display with Fluid design
Vivo X21 features a 15.95cm (6.28) 19:9 FHD+ FullView Display with 1.66mm side bezels and offers a 90.3% screen-to-body ratio for a better viewing experience. Vivo has customized the FunTouch OS 4.0 to provide notch support and develop an optimized notification bar for a seamless experience. To complement the high quality display of the Vivo X21, the smartphone integrates P3 display color management technology and supports a P3 wide color gamut to ensure more accurate, natural and saturated colors.
Capture More with Dual Pixel Sensors and AI Photography
Continuing Vivo’s legacy of photographic experience, the X21 is equipped with 12 MP front and rear cameras, which has Dual Pixel Sensors and an additional 5MP rear camera. The Dual Pixel Sensors on the Vivo X21 not only helps in improving focus speeds but significantly boost picture clarity due to a larger pixel count. It is also capable of providing brighter & vivid photos even in low light conditions.
Optimized Mobile Entertainment Experience
Vivo X21 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 which effectively handles all the multi-tasking requirements of modern day consumer. Pairing the processor with powerful 6GB RAM, significantly increases the overall speed of applications including mobile games. The 128GB storage space provides users with the liberty to shoot a number of photos and also save their favorite music, movies and applications without worrying about storage space limitations. Vivo X21 extends Vivo’s Hi-Fi legacy and features a Hi-Fi audio chipset a superior aural experience. With Deep Field technology in the X21, consumers have multiple options to experience panoramic surround, mega bass, clear voice effects and various environmental audio effects, all leading to a superior audio experience.
Global sales of smartphones to end users returned to growth in the first quarter of 2018 with a 1.3 percent increase over the same period in 2017, according to Gartner, Inc. Compared to the first quarter of 2017 sales of total mobile phones stalled and reached 455 million units in the first quarter of 2018.
Nearly 384 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter of 2018, representing 84 percent of total mobile phones sold (see Table 1). "Demand for premium and high-end smartphones continued to suffer due to marginal incremental benefits during upgrade," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "Demand for entry-level smartphones (sub-$100) and low midtier smartphones (sub-$150) improved due to better-quality models."
Continued weakness in Greater China's mobile phone market also limited growth potential for the top global brands, including Chinese brands such as OPPO and Vivo, with over 70 percent of their sales coming from Greater China.
Samsung Growth Slows, Apple Share Increases
Samsung's midtier smartphones faced continued competition from Chinese brands, which led to unit sales contraction year on year. This is despite the earlier launch of its flagship Galaxy S9/S9+ compared to the S8/S8+ in 2017, and despite the Note 8 having a positive impact on Samsung sales in the first quarter of 2018. Samsung's smartphone growth rate will remain under pressure through 2018, with Chinese brand's growing dominance and expansion into Europe and Latin America markets. Samsung is challenged to raise the average selling price (ASP) of its smartphones, while facing increasing competition from Chinese brands that are taking more market share.
The delayed sales boost for Apple from last quarter materialized. Apple's smartphone unit sales returned to growth in the first quarter of 2018, with an increase of 4 percent year on year.
"Even though demand for Apple's iPhone X exceeded that of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the vendor struggled to drive significant smartphone replacements, which led to slower-than-expected growth in the first quarter of 2018," said Gupta. "With its exclusive focus on premium smartphones, Apple needs to significantly raise the overall experience of its next-generation iPhones to trigger replacements and lead to solid growth in the near future."
Huawei and Xiaomi Remained the Big Winners
Huawei's refreshed smartphone portfolio helped strengthen its No. 3 global smartphone vendor position.
"Achieving 18.3 percent growth in the first quarter of 2018 helped Huawei close the gap with Apple," said Gupta. "However, its future growth increasingly depends on the vendor ramping up share in Emerging Asia/Pacific and resolving issues in the U.S. market, through the development of a stronger consumer brand. Huawei's attempt to grow its premium smartphone portfolio with its recent launches of the P20, P20 Pro and Honor 10 helps raise its competitiveness and growth potential.”
Xiaomi was the clear winner of the first quarter, achieving a growth of 124 percent year on year. Xiaomi's refreshed portfolio of smartphones and aggressive pricing strategy helped it hold the No. 4 spot in the first quarter of 2018. "This strategy led Xiaomi to achieve 330 percent growth in the Emerging Asia/Pacific region," said Gupta.
In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Google's Android and Apple's iOS achieved growth in units in the first quarter of 2018, but Android saw its share slightly contract.
In an industry first, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), premier organization under the Ministry of Culture for the archaeological researches and protection of the cultural heritage of the nation, has inked a Memorandum of Understating (MoU) with BookMyShow, India’s largest online entertainment ticketing platform and Yatra.com, one of India’s leading online travel agency. This MoU will enable overseas and domestic tourists and visitors to conveniently book their tickets online for 141 historical monuments, museums and sites in India, such as Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar, Ajanta and Ellora caves, Red Fort, Sun Temple, which fall under the purview of ASI.
The move, aimed towards supporting Government of India’s ‘Digital India’ initiative, will facilitate digitization of ASI’s service offerings, thereby providing fast track access and a world-class e-ticket booking experience to visitors. The partnership with BookMyShow and Yatra (the only OTA to provide this facility) will also be significant in promoting tourism and cultural heritage in India. The online booking services comes at no additional cost for a customer.
Commenting on this partnership, Karan Arora, General Manager- Business Development, BookMyShow said, “Monuments and historical sites not only give a glimpse of our rich heritage, culture and art that spans over hundreds of years, they also form a solid foundation for the tourism sector in India; their marvels attracting millions of people from across the world and from within our own country. The Archaeological Survey of India has taken lead in expanding e-ticketing for this segment. We are excited to work with them to innovate within this space and introduce unmatched convenience, while contributing to the Government’s Digital India initiative. With BookMyShow’s vast reach, user friendly platforms, secure payment systems and innovations such as the m-ticket (mobile ticket, which allows users entry straight into the venue premises without waiting in long queues), we are confident that we will be able to increase adoption for e-ticketing through this initiative and bring more people online.”
Speaking on the partnership, Dhiresh Sharma, Chief Business Officer, Activities - Yatra, said, “India has an extraordinary and diverse pool of cultural & built heritage & footfalls to such destinations are astounding. Therefore, we want to provide a high quality visitor experience which will empower the visitors (both Indian & International tourists) to book their tickets to these monuments online. In addition to providing online booking services, Yatra will be extending its platform for promoting cultural heritage and featuring all the essential information that a visitor needs to plan their sight-seeing: connectivity & access; opening & closing timings & facilities available along with write-ups on the monuments. We believe that this initiative, in partnership with The Archaeological Survey of India, will drive the convenience of ‘digital’ to all those planning to visit these sites and reiterate Yatra’s position of being ‘India ka travel planner’.”
The tickets for the 141 monuments, museums and sites, managed by ASI, are now available online on BookMyShow and Yatra platforms (website, mobile app and mobile web).
KNOLSKAPE, an end-to-end learning and assessment platform for accelerated employee development is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with CrossKnowledge, a global leader of digital learning solutions, serving over 12 million users in 130 countries. The partnership offers organizations new-age learning technologies coupled with best-in-class e-learning solutions leading to enhanced employee engagement and accelerated development.
As organizations face new challenges in engaging their multi-generational workforce, motivating learners, and measuring ROI on their employee development initiatives, companies across the globe are increasingly realizing the need to rethink their learning and development strategies and modes of delivery to cater to the specific learning needs of their employees. Realizing this need, KNOLSKAPE and CrossKnowledge(a Wiley Brand) aim to provide organizations with advanced learning content blended with new-age, experiential technologies such as simulations and gamification, for increased engagement and accelerated development.
According to Rajiv Jayaraman, Founder & CEO of KNOLSKAPE, “Learning is no longer a centralized function within organizations. Employees are highly involved in their own developmental journeys. To provide an unmatched experience to learners, we are thrilled to partner with CrossKnowledge – a multi-awarded company that provides cutting-edge digital learning solutions and has a great reputation in the learning management space.”
This partnership will also reinforce CrossKnowledge’s entry into the Indian learning market. According to Frederic Fouquet, International Partner Network Director, “We at CrossKnowledge are proud to be part of the learning journey of many employees and leaders entering the KNOLSKAPE Learning programs.”
CleverTap, the leader in intelligent mobile marketing automation solutions and an Amazon Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, is driving mobile growth and user engagement for leading brands during the various T20 cricket events in India. By hosting its marketing platform on AWS Cloud, CleverTap is capitalizing on AWS Cloud’s highly scalable, agile, and secure infrastructure to help them seamlessly serve some of India’s leading brands as they acquire and engage millions of users during the 2018 season.
Capitalizing on the popular appeal of this cricket format, many brands see it as an opportunity to drive their business growth and revenue. CleverTap enables businesses to communicate with their users via multiple engagement channels including push messaging, email, and SMS using personalized marketing automation solutions that scale with their user base. By sending contextual and timely messages around discount offers, promo codes, and live updates, CleverTap’s customers can easily increase user retention by 300 percent and monetization opportunities by 500 percent. Last season, over 14 billion push notifications were sent using CleverTap’s Mobile Marketing Platform. By the end of the 2018 season, CleverTap expects that push notifications will increase by 200 percent.
“Thanks to AWS Cloud, CleverTap has been able to support a 50 times increase in year-on-year growth in customer acquisition over the past five years,” said Suresh Kondamudi, Co-founder and CTO of CleverTap. “The CleverTap platform processes billions of events in seconds allowing businesses to send millions of notifications to their users with personalized contextual messaging like match scores, critical sporting moments, and more – all in real-time. On the opening day of the biggest T20 tournament in India, we recorded a 100 percent surge in traffic and processed over 4 billion events. For one of the opening day campaigns, about 100 million notifications were sent in just under 15 minutes. Our proprietary architecture deployed on AWS Cloud enables us to seamlessly scale up as required, without compromising on reliability and stability.”
“CleverTap uses auto-scaling and Amazon Elastic Container Services (ECS) to dynamically respond to spikes in incoming traffic, and in some cases pre-provision capacity, all while protecting customers’ personal data. AWS Cloud’s highly robust infrastructure allows customers to scale within a few minutes without having to worry about bandwidth, data transfer, and load balancing.
Leveraging AWS Regions spread across the world, CleverTap has built a platform that can support mobile marketing campaigns at scale, drive brand engagement, and increase customer value,” said Bikram Bedi, Head of India Region, Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd.
Atos and the CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) just launched an industrial research chair , co-funded by the National Research Agency (ANR), to develop research and innovation in quantum computing.
Led by Daniel Estève, the industrial research chair, named “Nasniq” (New nuclear spin architecture for quantum computing), aims to contribute to the development of the quantum computer, which can revolutionize how information is processed in the years ahead and can manage the explosion of data driven by Big Data and the Internet of Things. Quantum technologies represent a key factor for sovereignty which now requires a major effort in terms of research and development, bringing together academic teams and businesses.
To address this, Atos and the CEA-CNRS, with the support of the National Research Agency (ANR), will work in synergy and will contribute their expertise to this initiative.
Atos, a global player in supercomputing and European leader, will bring its expertise in high-performance computing and quantum computing to the industrial research chair. Indeed in 2016 Atos launched “Atos Quantum”, an ambitious quantum computing program that has already enabled it to bring to market, as of July 2017, the “Atos Quantum Learning Machine” (Atos QLM), the world’s first machine capable of simulating up to 40 quantum bits and which now simulates physical Qubits for increased performance.
Daniel Estève and the “Quantronic “group, from the Condensed State Physics Department (Spec, CEA-CNRS, Paris-Saclay), are pioneers in the knowledge and control of quantum information. This group founded the so-called Cooper pair box circuit that has led to superconducting quantum bits which are used today.
The Nasniq research chair will combine the essential research efforts carried out by the Spec team (CEA-CNRS) with Atos’ developments in algorithmic simulation, further reinforcing the synergies between all the activities of the CEA in this field. In addition, the chair will allow to monitor technological developments in the appropriation of this innovative field.
“This research chair marks an important milestone in the emergence of a French quantum computing industry. In a context in which quantum technologies are becoming a real global issue, it allows us to position Atos and the CEA, two leading French actors, as European leaders in quantum computing. Together we are involved in making France a major research center in quantum computing in the world”said Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO, Atos.
“International competition has accelerated dramatically in recent months in the field of quantum computing. The Nasniq chair is the opportunity for the CEA and Atos to extend their already existing partnership in the field of high performance computing in quantum computing. It will also allow us to position our teams more favourably in future European calls on quantum engineering, within the framework of the European Commission’s flagship Quantum Technologies or the 9th Framework Programme”, said François Jacq, General Manager of the CEA.
A Basic and Applied R&D program
The Nasniq chair must address several challenges:
* Design and test new types of qubits and better control quantum coherence: Spec teams are working to control quantum coherence by developing more robust quantum bits;
* Quantum software for hybrid qubits: Atos will provide its expertise in quantum software and algorithms, as well as in numerical simulation, for the development of new software relevant for qubits carried by a nuclear spin;
By strengthening the interaction between research teams and industrial teams, the Nasniq chair will also be able to train future engineers and researchers in the field.
The Indian flexi staffing market size is witnessing significant growth and sectors like BFSI, e-commerce, retail and infrastructure together are likely to add more than one million jobs by end of this year, says a report.
As per a recent global staffing report, the Indian staffing market size is estimated to be valued at €3.6 billion.
According to Indian Staffing Federation (ISF), an apex body of flexi staffing industry, automotive, retail and e-commerce and infrastructure are among the top 15 sectors that employ 81% of formal sector workforce.
“With automation and innovation changing the nature of the work, BFSI contributes 12%, infrastructure, construction and energy contribute 11%, retail and e-commerce together comprise 5 per cent in the national flexi staff,” the report said.
“The country is suffering from acute low levels of productivity at workplace that emanates from the real crisis – which is lack of skills,” ISF President Rituparna Chakraborty said.
Chakraborty further noted, “As members of the staffing industry, we are sitting on large volumes of jobs, however, we are able to hire only 5% of the youth that reach out to us on a daily basis.”
“We should welcome this and alongside shift our debates to skills rather than on non-availability of jobs,” she added.
According to ISF, the retail market’s growth has not only been witnessed in the metropolitan cities, but also across numerous tier I and tier III cities, providing enhanced business and job opportunities for the local youth.
According to one of ISF’s report, the organised retail sector will create 12,62,120 jobs, construction and real estate will create 1,37,280 jobs, BFSI will create 52,500 jobs while automobile sector to add 43,060 jobs by 2021.
