Wednesday, October 5, 2016

THE FASTEST RISE TIME IN THE WEST: MAKING A TRULY QUICK PULSE EDGE







by: Jenny List 


When we are taught about oscillators as newbie engineers, we are shown a variety of waveforms on an oscilloscope or in a textbook. This is a sine wave, they say, this is a sawtooth, this is a square wave, and so on. We’re taught to look at the lines on the screen as idealised, a square wave is truly square, and the transition from low to high voltage and back again is instantaneous.

In most cases this assumption is harmless. If we look into the subject a little deeper we learn that what seemed an instantaneous cliff-face is in fact a very steep slope, but when a circuit does its business in milliseconds there is usually no harm in ignoring a transition time measured in nanoseconds. The glue logic for your Arduino project can take its time.

Sometimes though, the rise time of a logic transition is important. The application that prompted this article was the measurement of oscilloscope bandwidth by looking at how quickly the ‘scope catches up with a pulse that exceeds its bandwidth, for example. When the instrument can happily measure the transition times of all your usual pulse generators, something out of the ordinary is called for. So it’s worth taking a look at the rise times you’d expect from everyday circuitry, examining a few techniques for generating rise times that are much faster.

THAT WAS CONSIDERED FAST, BACK IN MY DAY
Switching characteristics of a 2N3904, taken from the ON Semiconductor 2N3904 data sheet.

If you look at the data sheet for a typical transistor, you will find a section devoted to switching characteristics. Taking as an example the 2N3094popular general purpose transistor, you’ll find it has a quoted maximum rise time of 35nS. Thus if you applied a perfect square transition to its base, the corresponding change at its collector would finish happening a maximum of 35 nS later. This might sound rather quick, but it corresponds to the rise time of a sine wave just over 7.14 MHz. Of course the 2N3904 is capable of working at much higher frequencies in small-signal mode, but if it has to traverse the entirety of its range you’re stuck at 7.14 MHz.A 4.6 nS rise time from a mercury-wetted relay

When it comes to faster transition times, you might expect our path to lead directly to components designed for square wave transitions, such as logic gates. But before we

Apple will sell fewer smartwatches in 2016 than it did last year






By Rob Thubron on October 4, 2016, 9:30 AM


Respected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has a history of making accurate predictions regarding Apple products, but the iPhone maker will likely be hoping his latest estimates prove wrong. Kuo believes the company will sell fewer Apple Watches this year than it did in 2015.

Kuo had predicted that Apple would ship between 10 million to 10.5 million Apple Watches in 2016. The figures includes both the original Series 1 model and the recently released Series 2.

But in a note to investors obtained by Business Insider, Kuo revised his estimates. He now believes that 8.5 million to 9 million Apple Watches will ship by the end of the year – a drop of 15 to 25 percent from his original prediction. He has, however, raised shipping estimates for the Apple Watch Series 2 by 10 percent, though this isn’t enough to stop the overall sales figure from decreasing.

Apple hasn’t revealed how many of its original wearables have sold since they launched in April last year, so estimates tend to vary wildly. Kuo believes 10.4 million units shipped during the eight months the Apple watch was available in 2015, meaning fewer units are predicted to sell in 2016 - despite the longer selling time.

So why the pessimistic outlook from Kuo? He identifies four main reasons why the smartwatches aren't selling as well as Apple hoped. Like similar devices, the lack of a “killer” app and a poor battery life are major issues for many consumers. Kuo also identifies a reliance on

Service providers still act like utilities





By Bob O'Donnell on October 4, 2016, 10:45 AM




If you ever want to enliven a cocktail party filled with executives from the telco or cable industry, just start talking about dumb pipes. As in, “your service doesn’t offer anything more than a simple connection from my devices to the internet content I want—it’s a dumb pipe.”

Of course, most of you will never have to worry about going through such an awkward social encounter, but if you do—that zinger is bound to get things going.

All kidding aside, the notion that carriers and other service providers offer little more than basic connectivity has been an industry hot button for some time. Even now, despite a number of efforts to spice things up, most telcos and cable service providers are seen as companies that provide a very indistinct connectivity service that people only reluctantly pay for.

The primary differentiators for competitive players in this space are price, price and, oh yeah, price, with maybe a bit of coverage or service quality thrown in for good measure. It’s little wonder that many consumers hold these companies in such low esteem—they just don’t see the value in the services beyond basic connectivity. It’s also not surprising that so many people are looking at cord-cutting, cord replacement, or other options.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The amount of data that telco and cable service providers have access to should allow them to generate some very interesting, useful and valuable services that consumers should be happy to pay for. Now, admittedly, there are some serious privacy and regulatory concerns that have to be taken into consideration, but with appropriate anonymizing techniques, there are

This candle will make your room smell like a new MacBook





By Shawn Knight on October 4, 2016, 5:30 PM




One of the perks of purchasing a new vehicle is getting to enjoy that undeniable new car smell. Some new electronic devices, like a MacBook Pro, apparently give off a distinctly unique odor of their own.

It’s that scent that mobile accessory maker Twelve South claims to have “bottled up” and is now selling in the form of a candle.

Twelve South, which got its start in 2009, says on its New Mac Candle product page that the candle exhibits hints of mint, basil, peach, mandarin, sage and lavender which somehow mesh together to create the scent you get when unboxing a new Mac (you can’t make this stuff up).



It’s unclear how Twelve South came up with this concoction of ingredients. Perhaps the team used the Madeline odor camera profiled here a few years back?

The candle, hand-poured in Charleston, South Carolina, is made of 100 percent soy wax with a burn time of between 45 and 55 hours. It’ll set you back $24 and judging from the fact that it’s currently out of stock, it must be pretty popular. Twelve South says it expects more inventory to arrive later this month.

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, this could make the perfect stocking stuffer for the diehard Apple enthusiast in your life.

Yahoo built software to scan all its customers' emails for US spy agencies





By Rob Thubron on October 5, 2016, 6:15 AM


It seems there’s no end to Yahoo’s problems. Last month, the troubled company admittedthat at least 500 million user accounts had been compromised in a breach that took place in 2014. It claimed “state-sponsored actors” were responsible for the attack, though a security firm disputes this. Now, it’s been revealed that Yahoo secretly built custom software last year that scanned all of its customers’ incoming emails for information provided by US intelligence officials.

The report comes from Reuters’ Joseph Menn, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo was complying with a classified US government request when it created the scanning tool that searched hundreds of millions of user emails at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI. The software was searching for a specific string of characters, though it’s unclear exactly what words or phrases it was looking for and what data, if any, Yahoo handed over to the authorities.

When Yahoo’s internal security team discovered the software, they initial thought it was the work of hackers. Company CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to comply with the demand led to Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos leaving his position to join Facebook in June 2015. Stamos said a programming flaw could have allowed hackers to access the stored emails.

The incident is the first known case of a company agreeing to an agency’s request to scan all arriving emails, rather than probing stored messages or a small number of accounts in real time. "Yahoo is a law-abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States," the firm said

Apple edges out Google as the world's most valuable brand for the fourth consecutive year





By Rob Thubron on October 5, 2016, 12:45 PM




Its smartphone sales may be slipping, the iPhone 7 has been criticized for looking overly similar to last year’s model (and having no 3.5mm headphone jack), and analysts predict it will sell fewer smartwatches this year than in 2015. But despite all this, Apple has been named the most valuable brand in the world for the fourth year in a row.

Brand consultancy firm Interbrand placed Apple at number one with a brand valuation of $178.1 billion, a five percent increase from last year. Rival Google sits behind the Cupertino company with a brand valuation of $133.2 billion, eleven percent higher than in 2015.

Technology companies take up ten of the top twenty places on the list. Microsoft sits behind Coca-Cola in fourth place with a $72.7 billion brand value, up eight percent over the last 12 months. Further down the top ten is IBM; it may have dropped nineteen percent from last year, but the industry giant's $52.5 billion brand value places it at number six.

A fourteen percent increase in 2016 puts Samsung beneath IBM at number seven with a brand value of $51.8 billion, while Amazon, which saw its stock pass the $800 milestone for the first time last month, is at number eight. The online retailer's brand value increased a massive 33 percent this year to $50.3 billion.

The other tech firms in the top 20 are Intel at fourteen ($36 billion, +4 percent), Facebook at fifteen ($32.5 billion, +48 percent), Cisco at sixteen ($30.9 billion, +4 percent), and Oracle at seventeen ($26.5 billion, -3 percent).



Two companies have joined the list this year: Tesla at number 100 ($4 billion) and Dior at 89 ($4.9 billion).

Facebook and Amazon experienced the biggest growth in brand value across 2016 – 48 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

Writing about Apple’s success, Interbrand noted: “Apple shows how ecosystems drive value. Analysts have often pointed out that ‘Apple has superior products.’ While true, this opinion undersells the brilliance of Apple’s functionally- integrated model. Its software, hardware, and touchpoints are connected not just by beautiful design aesthetics, but by a level of interoperability that justifies the Apple premium and discourages defections to another platform. And the more data you share, the more personal it becomes— adding new devices is painless and the thought of switching increasingly unpromising. Apple is the Alpha of Cohesiveness in full effect.”

The first Project Tango AR smartphone arrives next month





By Jose Vilches on October 5, 2016, 1:45 PM



Google may putting all its weight behind the new Pixel smartphones as it moves to become a full-fledged, vertically integrated device maker — controlling hardware, software, and ecosystem design. But that doesn't mean it has forgotten about its other, niche smartphone projects. According to Cnet, the company’s first commercially-available Tango phone will go on sale next month, as confirmed by Google’s head of VR and AR Clay Bavor.

The Lenovo-made Phab 2 Pro uses depth sensing 3D camera system that scans the world around you to deliver augmented reality experiences. It can do things like scan real world objects and bring them into a virtual world, and it can position itself in a room via motion tracking while using the included fisheye camera to identify edges and corners, which can be used to build a three-dimensional map of indoor spaces.



Spec-wise, the handset features a huge 6.4-inch Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440) IPS curved glass display, a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon 652 SoC alongside 4GB of RAM, a 4,050mAh battery and 64GB of local flash storage expandable via microSD card slot.

Around back you’ll find a 16-megapixel camera and a fish-eye camera as well as depth and motion tracking sensors that are necessary to make Tango’s magic work, alongside a series of sensors under the hood. Other features include dual SIM slots, a fingerprint reader, a front-facing eight megapixel camera, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, triple-array active noise cancellation and Dolby Atmos audio technology.

The Phab 2 Pro was supposed to arrive in September but got delayed for unspecified reasons. It should sell for $499 unlocked in your choice of gray or gold aluminum finish. As Cnet points out, only the Google Pixel phones will be compatible with the Daydream VR headset, not the Phab2 Pro. The latter is all about augmented reality.

Learn all about ethical hacking with the Computer Hacker Professional Certification Package





By TechSpot Deals on October 5, 2016, 7:45 AM


With the Computer Hacker Professional Certification Package you can prepare to ace five certification exams that are sure to make you shine brighter than the competition. This package comes with prep materials for the following exams:
Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI)
Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)
Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
Certified Information Systems Security Pro (CISSP)

Dive into over 60 hours of training as you learn how to sniff out network vulnerabilities by breaching them yourself. You’ll familiarize yourself with the legal standards behind handling forensic evidence, and you’ll discover how to review forensic data using tools like Access Data’s Forensic Toolkit, EnCase, and more.

For a limited time, the Computer Hacker Professional Certification Package is on sale for over 90% off its $1,499 retail price, taking the final price down to just $59.

Google releases a Quick Switch Adapter to help you transfer data from iPhone to Pixel

Google releases a Quick Switch Adapter to help you transfer data from iPhone to Pixel

By 
The Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones were announced at the ‘Made By Google’ event in San Francisco. Pre-order for these devices will start from 13 Oct on Flipkart, Croma and Reliance Digital along with the Google store. The base model is priced at Rs 57,000.
In order to make switching from an iPhone to a Pixel easier, Google has bundled in a Quick Switch Adapter. While switching between Android phones is easier since your data is backed up on your Google account, doing that from an iPhone can get a bit more time consuming.
Google Pixel Pixel XL White Black
You will need to use the old data cable of your iPhone, with one end connected to the lightning port and the other USB port connected to the adapter which is connected to the USB Type C port on the Google Pixel/PixelXL.
Once the connection is established, the Pixel smartphone will guide you through a set of instructions on how to go about. The transfer process is compatible with iPhones as well as iPads which run iOS version 8 and above.
You will need to switch off iMesssages and FaceTime from your iOS settings before removing the SIM card from the iPhone/iPad. You also need to ensure that the Pixel/PixelXL is at least 50 percent charged before the transfer process begins. In the process you are asked to log into your Google account and you are asked what all you want to transfer between the phones. Options include contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, music, SMS messages and iMessages.

Newly appointed FBI head in San Francisco, Jack Bennett was a key figure in iPhone hack

Newly appointed FBI head in San Francisco, Jack Bennett was a key figure in iPhone hack

Image Credit: REUTERS
Special Agent Jack Bennett was at the FBI’s computer investigation lab in Quantico, Virginia, on a Sunday in March when an outside company showed the bureau how it could hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. The tool would end the FBI’s high-profile fight with Apple over access to the phone, but Bennett said there was no celebration.
“There wasn’t high fives, and there weren’t people singing down the hallways,” he recalled. “It was very much business. ‘OK, let’s move forward to the next steps. Let’s get on the phone. What do we need to do to purchase the tool?'” The iPhone fight exposed a rift between the FBI and Silicon Valley technology companies over encryption, and sparked a debate about the right balance between privacy and national security. Bennett, 52, was a key figure in that battle as head of the bureau’s digital forensics labs, which extract evidence from computers and other devices and were tasked with accessing the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
Bennett is now in charge of the agency’s San Francisco division, where he views his role, in part, as trying to bridge the divide between Silicon Valley and the FBI. He took over as special agent in charge of San Francisco in May after nearly 30 years in law enforcement. He started his career as a narcotics investigator with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and did a stint with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration eradicating cocaine smuggling operations in South America.
He has investigated child sex crimes and animal rights extremists for the FBI and previously served as an assistant special agent in San Francisco. “The U.S. government sometimes loses sight of what is important to corporations … and privacy is incredibly important,” Bennett said during a recent interview at his office, where a Thompson submachine gun like the type used by agents in the 1930s sits in a glass display case on a coffee table.
Still, he was unapologetic about the bureau’s desire to access the phone. “We were pretty surprised that this turned in such a way that it became this national debate,” Bennett said. “It was never intended to be. … We were trying to get on one phone because we had 14 murdered people.”
The fight between Apple Inc. and the FBI centered on the work-issued iPhone 5c of Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people at a 2015 holiday gathering of county workers. The U.S. Justice Department demanded that Apple create software to bypass security features on the phone.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the FBI was asking his company to create a “back door” that could be used to unlock other phones, exposing customer data. Agreeing to the FBI’s demand would set a dangerous precedent that could lead to

Researchers engineer a new material that can make computers 100 times more energy efficient

Researchers engineer a new material that can make computers 100 times more energy efficient

Image: Reuters
Researchers including one of Indian-origin have engineered a material that could lead to a new generation of computing devices, packing in more computing power while consuming nearly 100 times less energy thant today’s electronics require. “Electronics are the fastest-growing consumer of energy worldwide,” said one of the study authors, Ramamoorthy Ramesh from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US.
“Today, about five per cent of our total global energy consumption is spent on electronics, and that’s projected to grow to 40-50 percent by 2030 if we continue at the current pace and if there are no major advances in the field that lead to lower energy consumption,” Ramesh said. Known as a magnetoelectric multiferroic material, it combines electrical and magnetic properties at room temperature and relies on a phenomenon called “planar rumpling.”
The new material sandwiches together individual layers of atoms, producing a thin film with magnetic polarity that can be flipped from positive to negative or vice versa with small pulses of electricity.  In the future, device-makers could use this property to store the binary digits that underpin computing devices. “Before this work, there was only one other room-temperature multiferroic whose magnetic properties could be controlled by electricity,” said John Heron, Assistant Professor at University of Michigan who worked on the material with researchers at Cornell University.
“That electrical control is what excites electronics makers, so this is a huge step forward,” Heron noted. Room-temperature multiferroics are a hotly pursued goal in the electronics field because they require much less power to read and write data than today’s semiconductor-based devices.  In addition, their data doesn’t vanish when the power is shut off. Those properties could enable devices that require only brief pulses of electricity instead of the constant stream that’s needed for current electronics, using an estimated 100 times less energy. A paper on the work was published in the journal Nature.
IANS

Facebook’s ‘Secret Conversations’ brings end-to-end encryption to its one billion Messenger users

Facebook’s ‘Secret Conversations’ brings end-to-end encryption to its one billion Messenger users

By 
Facebook has completed the roll out of its ‘Secret Conversations’ feature to each and every one of its Messenger users. The feature was rolled out to beta users in July and started rolling out to regular users in September.
Facebook Messenger’s Secret Conversations feature enables end-to-end encryption for conversations between two devices. Setting this implementation of encryption apart from other methods used by the likes of WhatsApp and Allo is the fact that this encryption is opt-in and limited to two participating devices.
This means that users will need to explicitly enable Secret Conversations for every, well, secret conversation that you want to have. Encryption keys are stored on your device and the conversation is limited to the participating devices. In fact, any Secret Conversation will be unique to the participating devices. You can’t access it via a different device or via your browser.
A secret conversation will follow a black colour theme so as not to confuse it with a regular conversation.
The protocol used is the same one that’s used by Snowden’s favourite messaging app, Signal. It’s been developed by Open Whisper systems to be extremely secure, and it is. The system ensures absolute privacy between two devices and integrates a number of checks to ensure that conversations are secure.
The downside to Secret Conversations is that you can’t send gifs or video and are limited to stickers and images. You also can’t use this system for group conversations.
Opting in for encryption might seem like an odd move from a company that made end-to-end encryption the default mode of operation on its other messaging app, WhatsApp. However, TheNextWeb suggests that this move by Facebook is an attempt to bypass legal hassles. WhatsApp has gotten into trouble with various governments, including the Indian government, over this policy.

The embedded systems industry is set to expand because of increased usage of electronics

The embedded systems industry is set to expand because of increased usage of electronics

Image Credits: REUTERS
Terming the present times as the golden period of embedded systems programming, experts on Tuesday said the technology was at an inflection point due to increasing use in electronic products across industry verticals. “The Asia-Pacific embedded systems market size is projected to reach $81 billion in 2023 from $46 billion in 2014, while it is predicted to be $15 billion in India from $5 billion,” said UBM India Group Head Apporba Kumar at a conference on electronics and embedded systems here.
Noting that the Indian embedded systems community was on a growth path with a focus on creating an ecosystem, he said the industry, academia and the government were promoting ‘Made in India’ products across verticals such as automotive, defence, telecom and medical for global markets. “The game-plan is to establish aBrand India’ and make our country a go-to destination for global majors to manufacture electronic products in India,” said Kumar.
Embedded engineers and designers from across the country and the world over are participating in the three-day conference-cum-expo in which 100 embedded firms are showcasing their innovative solutions and products. “The whole society is dependent on embedded software and looks to embedded systems for solutions to the problems of our time, including environment protection, energy production and delivery, transportation, and healthcare,” said Digital Networking Director Rob Oshana.
With the Moore’s Law marching into its fifth decade, even hardware design is becoming more like software development. Largest chip maker Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would double every year and continue into the foreseeable future.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the golden time of embedded systems programming is now,” reiterated Oshana. UBM India is an arm of UBM Asia, a leading organiser of technology conferences and exhibitions in China India and Malaysia to provide industry platforms for buyers and sellers the world over.
IANS

Julian Assange promises to release new material every week on Wikileaks, for next 10 weeks

Julian Assange promises to release new material every week on Wikileaks, for next 10 weeks

Image Credit: Reuters
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced at a press conference on Tuesday that his platform will release new material in the coming months.
It is planned to publish new material every week in the next ten weeks, Xinhua news agency quoted Assange as saying in a live video broadcast to Berlin on the 10th birthday of WikiLeaks.
The new releases will cover the themes such as oil, weapons and corporations like Google, according to Assange.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks also wants to publish new details for the US election, but left the exact date open. However, WikiLeaks is working on publishing the material before the election date on 8 November, said Assange.
The upcoming publications were “of significant importance for the elections”, the 45-year-old Australian said in response to a question whether the new information “will destroy the Democratic presidential candidate”.
With a view to the 10th anniversary of the founding of WikiLeaks, Assange emphasised that despite all the hostility of “powerful opponents”, the website is still well positioned.
“We have a strong position, we are debt-free and completely independent,” he said.
“The attacks only make us stronger,” Assange said, “We believe in what we do, and when we are put under pressure, we will fight back.”
WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of secret documents over the past few years, including the US military’s actions in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The Australian, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012, claimed that Sweden intends to hand him over to the United States, where he may face espionage charges for leaking thousands of secret US diplomatic cables and, if convicted, could be given a death penalty.
IANS

AMD announces 7th gen PRO series APUs for business needs

AMD announces 7th gen PRO series APUs for business needs

By 
AMD has announced its 7th generation PRO series APUs which were formerly codenamed Bristol Ridge PRO. The PCs featuring the 7th gen PRO APUs are targetted at business users to deliver improved computing and graphics performance along with improved energy efficiency. HP and Lenovo are among the vendors who have product with these processors.
Some of the major features of the AMD PRO processors regarding business usage include
  • Help ensure sensitive data and trusted applications remain secure with the dedicated and integrated AMD Secure Processor technology
  • AMD PRO desktop processors provide 14 percent more compute and 22 percent more graphics performance while being 31 percent more energy efficient than 6th gen AMD PRO processors
  • Open standards and CPU-agnostic DASH manageability to allow IT departments to easily integrate and manage systems
The new processor will be seen  inside the HP EliteDesk 705 G3 series desktops which come in small form factor and are prominently used by

Honda Accord Hybrid to arrive in India soon, will be initially imported

Honda Accord Hybrid to arrive in India soon, will be initially imported

By 
If reports are to be believed, then Honda might be planning to bring back the Accord to India in the coming few months. The premium sedan was discontinued back in 2013, but now the ninth-generation of the car could make its way with a hybrid engine.
The new Honda Accord will come with a 2.0-litre iVTEC engine, two electric motors, a lithium-ion battery pack and an electronic control unit to churn out 209 bhp. The two-motor hybrid system is a first in this segment. In this setup, one motor is used to accelerate from a dead stop, and the second one starts the engine and charges the first motor.
However, Honda officials have said initially the car will be imported on the basis of confirmed orders. The upcoming Honda Accord will come with a sporting a lean stance along with a chrome grille, re-designed bumpers, new head-lamps with an LED strip. The dash will feature push button start, multi-information display, dual-zone automatic climate control system, steering-mounted controls, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, reverse parking camera, six airbags, and more.
The Accord hybrid will be Honda’s first and only hybrid model in India and could sell with a price tag of Rs 30 lakh and should compete against the Toyota Camry Hybrid.

Strong chip sales in Q3 will help Samsung ease financial impact after Note 7 fiasco

Strong chip sales in Q3 will help Samsung ease financial impact after Note 7 fiasco

Image: Reuters
Scarred by the global recall of its flagship smartphone, Samsung Electronics Co is set to report on Friday it still expects a small rise in third-quarter profit, analysts say, with healthy sales of memory chips and displays easing the pain. Lost sales and expenses tied to the recall of at least 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 handsets to fix battery problems could cost the firm nearly $5 billion this year, some analysts have said. That could sap momentum from a nascent recovery in Samsung’s mobile business, an underperformer in recent years.
But a pickup in the memory chip market, led by demand from rival smartphone maker Apple Inc, will buttress earnings, company watchers say. A Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate, derived from a survey of 20 analysts, tips overall July-September operating profit to have edged up 0.7 percent from a year earlier to 7.4 trillion won ($6.65 billion).
“So long as the operating profit number comes in at a low 7 trillion won level, the market will look at it and think some of noise surrounding the Note 7 recall issue has cleared,” said HDC Asset Management fund manager Park Jung-hoon. Analysts have lowered their expectations for Samsung’s mobile division since the Sept. 2 recall made global headlines. Some have cut their mobile division profit forecast by 1 trillion won or more to reflect the lost sales chipand costs of recalling a smartphone that had won rave reviews and made a strong sales start since its launch in Aug. 19.
Korea Investment analyst Jay Yoo forecast Samsung’s third-quarter mobile division operating profit at 2.6 trillion won, up from 2.4 trillion won a year earlier but down from 4.3 trillion won in April-June. But analysts say Samsung’s chips division – the firm is the world’s biggest memory chip maker – will soothe the Note 7 woes as other smartphone makers filled chip order books and drove prices higher ahead of the peak year-end shopping season. Analysts estimate the division could report quarterly operating profit of 3 trillion won or more – its highest in four quarters.
Analysts said the semiconductors uptrend was more pronounced for NAND memory chips – used for long-term data storage – as demand started to outpace supply during the quarter due to orders from Apple and Chinese smartphone makers. Demand for solid-state drive storage chips for mobile devices also grew. Samsung stands to benefit from the upswing – especially in the NAND market, where it dominates rivals such as Japan’s Toshiba Corp and U.S. firm Micron Technology Inc in the market for high-end 3D products such as enterprise servers and storage.
Samsung’s display business earnings also likely picked up some of the slack from the mobile division thanks to increasing adoption of its organic light-emitting diode displays (OLED) by rising Chinese smartphone makers such as OPPO and VIVO, analysts said. “While the Galaxy Note 7 recall is a painful blow, the third quarter will show that components including DRAM, NAND and displays did better than expected,” Dongbu Securities said in a report, tipping operating profit for the chips division to be at 3 trillion won.
Reuters

Fossil Group launches variety of connected watches in India

Fossil Group launches variety of connected watches in India

Global luxury accessories maker Fossil Group on Wednesday entered the wearable segment in India by unveiling a range of connected devices that include smart watches, hybrid watches and fitness trackers.
The wearable devices span across six of Fossil Group’s licensed brands — Fossil Q, Michael Kors Connected, Skagen Connected, Chaps, Emporio Armani and Misfit.
“Indians are very passionate about technology and are quick to adopt the latest. We believe the country will continue to be a key market for us,” Sonny Vu, President and CTO, Connected Devices, Fossil Group, told reporters here.
Fossil’s Q Wander smartwatch features a soft curving, multi-finish case and comes with interchangeable genuine leather strap.
Q Marshal features a rugged case along with a navy blue plated case paired with vintage-inspired leather straps.
Both Q Wander and Q Marshal feature Always On Display, allowing users to access important information like time, calls and alerts anytime.
Users can also respond to messages from the watch by tapping the screen or

Karbonn Quattro L52 VR Review: Don’t bother buying this


Karbonn Quattro L52 VR is one of seven phones launched by Karbonn Mobiles in this year and the third phone from the Quattro series. The company launched this phone back in April and wanted to target budget users with the bundled VR headset for its VR content. Not many companies have gone this way in targeting budget segment with VR offering, except Lenovo with Vibe K4 Note. You sure can use third party VR headsets to consume the VR content but bundled VR headset along with the name of the device itself and bundled VR apps go a long way in showing that this isn’t a trial run.
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Karbonn Quattro L52 VR is one in a sea of mobile devices made by the company, trying to capitalise on being one of the first to target the low-end smartphones with VR content, driving the price lower than Lenovo Vibe K4 Note. Let’s see how it fares.
Build Quality: 7.5/10
_DSC2576
The build quality of Karbonn Quattro L52 VR is surprisingly good. I was not expecting a metal frame body and curved glass on the front with
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