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Vivo unveils first under display fingerprint technologySHANGHAI: Aiming to take on tech giants Samsung and Apple, Chinese smartphone maker Vivo on Wednesday launched the industry-first under display fingerprint technology that will strike out the need of a physical button to unlock the device. Called Vivo Under Display, the technology was unveiled at MWC 2017 here. “From processing innovations in casings to dual lenses for both front and back cameras and finally design breakthroughs in appearance, the smartphone industry has entered a new round of technological competition,” Alex Feng, Senior Vice President at Vivo, told the gathering.

Microsoft plans Cloud-focused reorganisation SAN FRANCISCO: With Mi-crosoft putting emphasis on its Cloud-computing products instead of li-cences for boxed software, the technology giant is likely to reorganise its sales groups, resulting in layoffs, media reported. A formal announcement could be made by next week, Seattle Times reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Taiwan gets its first Apple storeTAIPEI: In a bid to expand its customer outreach, Apple on Saturday opened its first-ever store in Taiwan. The store is located on the ground floor of the iconic building Taipei 101 of Taiwan’s capital Taipei. Apple Taipei 101 features the company’s latest store design. Avenues, inspired by window displays along a shopping street, line the store walls with interac-tive displays. There are currently 130 employees at the store who will introduce the customers to Apple’s best products, services and in-store experiences.

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The People’s Chronicle | www.thepeopleschronicle.inImphal, Monday, July 03, 2017

InFocus on Wednesday launched its Turbo 5 smartphone powered by a 5000mAh battery for the Indian market. The device sports a 5.2 inch HD IPS 2.5D glass display and is powered with a 1.3 GHz Quad core processor

Samsung QLED Q8C (65-inch) TV review: Picture-perfect, if you can affordAGENCIES

TVs have evolved and come a long way. The idiot box is not-so-idiot anymore and like the smartphone it has also undergone a surgery to become clever. First, we had CRT's, then came the age of thin tubes with HD and Full HD resolution. Followed by UHD TVs (also known as 4K TVs) and now we have reached the era of QLED TVs with clearer 4K picture.

Calling it the 'next innovation in TV', Samsung's new flagship TV line-up features Quantum dot LED (Light Emitting Diode), which has tiny par-ticles that radiate a certain spectrum of light capable of reproducing 100% colour, when supplied with energy. Samsung has been using quantum dots for the last two years in SUHD TVs. But, Samsung is claiming that the QLEDs are up to twice as bright as SUHD TVs.

The new series consists of three models. This includes Q7, Q8 and Q9 in two screen size variants - 65-inch and 55-inch. We got the chance to review the 65-inch variant Q8C, which is priced at Rs 4,70,900, and here is our review.

Design and displayThe minimalistic design of the Sam-

sung QLED TV is nothing but stunning. It comes with a smooth textured back and metallic borders that are so thin, it gives an almost bezel-less look. Almost all aspects of the TV bring you back to the same notion that how Samsung has crafted this TV so well.

The display panel of the Samsung TV has only two wires connected to it -- the power connection and the fibre optical port for the OneConnect box. Being dubbed as the 'Invisible Connection', this optical fibre cable

is a very thin and transparent that comes in lengths of 5 or 15 meters. This wire then goes on to connect to the OneConnect box, thanks to which, you can say goodbye to tangled cables. This box houses all the connectivity ports (usually found on the TV) name-ly, four HDMIs, three USBs, Ethernet and one component. Over that, this TV hub has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as other connectivity options.

Users have an option to either mount the TV on a centrally placed metallic bar-style stand or against the wall. The TV offers a No Gap Wall

mount, which brings the TV flush against the wall, again giving it a cleaner premium look.

The TV comes with a smart remote, yet again with minimal buttons. Like what we saw with the Samsung SUHD 4K Curved Smart TV KS9000 . Ev-erything about this thin tube leans towards the classy and premium look.

Moving on to the display, which the company is emphasising to be the world's best. Samsung Q8c has a 4K (3,840x2,160-pixel resolution) curved screen with Quantum Dot Co-lour technology, which the company says can provide a wider and more accurate colour reproduction. The QLED TVs offer DCI-P3 colour space accurately and can reproduce 100% colour volume. This means that the new thin tubes can express all colours at brightness level between 1,500 and 2,000 nits. So, we put it to the test and see if that statement holds true.

On our test bench, the TV offered outstanding picture quality with amazing details. The colours are ex-tremely vivid and realistic with deep blacks and exceptional brightness. We could not see any ghosting during fast moving actions scenes.

Micromax, Intex have new plan to corner Xiaomi, Oppo

AGENCIES

NEW DELHI: Indian handset companies like Micromax, Intexand Karbonn have sought government help to stay competitive against cash-rich Chinese rivals whose aggressive moves have pushed the local play-ers down in an intensely competitive market.

Karbonn and Intex argued that the Chinese players — who have rapidly cornered more than half of India's fast-growing smartphone market — were not expand-ing the government's Digital India vision by not launching sub-Rs 5,000 smartphones, a segment entirely run by local players.

Intex Technologies, which once rose to number two among handsets makers be-fore slipping badly since, is asking for some stimulus in the form of infrastructure or taxation support from the government. This is on sim-ilar lines as those offered by Chinese, and now American, governments that want to en-sure local companies thrive.

Domestic handset makers were the first to contribute to Make in India. Intex has plans to invest over Rs 1,500 crore in its sixth manufacturing facil-ity in Uttar Pradesh to make phones, LED TVs, washing machines and mobile acces-sories. "Despite all the invest-ments towards marketing and advertising, they're not con-tributing to the growth of the smartphone market and not to Digital India... they're not in the low-cost market, like we are," said Shashin Devsare, executive director at Karbonn Mobiles. Devsare added that

Karbonn's aim was to ensure smartphone penetration at the bottom of the pyramid which would then enable them to access essential government services.

Rajeev Jain, chief financial officer at Intex Technologies said he wanted some "protec-tion" from the government.

"All major countries are doing it, why shouldn't In-dia do too?" Rajesh Agarwal, cofounder of Micromax, said the government "should also support Indian brands" which needed to fight competition on fair grounds. "As an Indian brand, we will have to invest in design, manufacturing and R&D (research and de-velopment) because of which we will be competitive," he added.

Lava International declined to offer any comments for this story. The Indian players plan to approach the government after the dust around GST im-plementation settles down.

The comments come as moneyed Chinese smartphone makers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Levnovo and Gionee have been rapidly expanding their footprint in India on the

back of 60-65 per cent higher margins to trade channel than Indian players, upfront pay-ments to retailers for occupy-ing shop-fronts and in-store branding.

They have also increased marketing spend on TV seven times in 2016 to Rs 509 crore versus 2015, say industry insiders quoting TAM/BARC data. Experts say the Indian players could count on local manufacturing efficiencies, innovation through research and design, and content and service localisation to beat their deep pocketed Chinese rivals. They come up short against the marketing of the likes of Vivo, which on Tues-day paid Rs 2,200 crore for IPL rights till 2020, a whopping 455 per cent increase over its own highest bid for the pre-vious contract term.

Another way might be to partner the Chinese, like one of the oldest mobile phone companies has done. Spice Mobility, that sells phones under the Spice brand, part-nered with China's Transsion Group, which sells the Itel brand of feature phones and smartphones in Africa.

Samsung to relaunch Galaxy Note 7 on July 7AGENCIES

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics announced on Sunday that on July 7 it will release in South Korea a refurbished version of its controversial smartphone Galaxy Note 7, which was recalled last year after several cases of these handsets catching fire.

A total of 400,000 units of the refurbished smartphone, named the Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition, will go on sale at around $600, according to a company statement.

Samsung was forced to suspend the production and sales of the Galaxy Note 7 due to repeated incidents of the

devices blowing up, which, subsequent investigations showed, was caused by a manufacturing fault in the battery, Efe news reported.

The fiasco involving Sam-sung's flagship smartphone

led to the company incurring operating losses of around 6.1 trillion won ($5.2 billion).

The redesigned Galaxy Note will have completely updated software as well as a lower-capacity battery com-pared to the original model after attempts to develop a long-lasting but small battery were found to be partly to blame for the phones catch-ing fire.

Following the smart-phone's recall last year, Samsung received a large number of petitions from environment groups asking it to repair and reuse the 4.3 million Note 7 handsets that had been produced.

SoundBot launches Bluetooth speaker

AGENCIES

NEW DELHI: California-based SoundBot on Wednesday launched Bluetooth speaker "SB571" in India at a price of Rs 1,990. The "SB571" has a 3.0 Bluetooth connectivity, with a range of 33 feet and a 10-hour

wireless playback."I am delighted to bring such

a great quality speaker packed with so many features at an affordable price," said Howard, the SoundBot Director, in a statement.

The SB571 speaker is cur-rently available on Amazon.

With no GST breather, ready-to-move-in flats to cost moreAGENCIES

MUMBAI: The consumers will have to shell out more for the ready to move-in flats under the GST system as devel-opers with large unsold inventories are planning to pass on the higher tax burden to home-buyers.

However, the new flats will cost less, giving some breather to the developers of upcoming projects.

Under GST, the effective tax on un-der-construction projects has gone up to 12 per cent, which is an increase of 6.5 per cent. The actual GST rate is 18 per cent on realty, but allows one-third of the tax to be deducted from the land value, from the total cost charged by the developer.

The GST gives an option of getting full input set-off credit, which is not applicable on ready-to-move-in flats and as a result, developers will have to bear the burden of higher tax or pass on to the end-consumers or increase the overall prices to match the new tax burden, say developers.

"While developers might still get some benefits for projects that are in nascent stages, they will have to bear the tax burden for the ready-to-move-in projects since they are kept out of the GST ambit, House of Hiranandani Chairman and Managing Director Surendra Hiranandani said.

Gera Developments Managing Di-rector Rohit Gera said under the GST

regime, tax on under construction projects would be 12 per cent, an in-crease of 6.5 per cent for buyers.

"There is an option of getting full input set-off credit on all input side if GST is paid by them, but this is not applicable on ready-to-move-in prop-erties," he said.

As a result, developers will either have to bear the burden of the tax since it cannot be passed on to the end consumers or the rates of apartments that are ready-to-occupy will increase to the extent of the taxes," Gera said.

Vinod S Menon, CEO of Bengalu-ru-based mid-market developer Citrus Ventures, says "everybody talks about the positives that GST brings in. But the devil lies in the details and no one

seems to have any clarity on that."Menon said though one-third de-

duction makes the effective rate 12 per cent, with current effective VAT plus service tax rate being nine per cent, there is still a three per cent incremental charge.

Since no retrospective claim of credits is possible, this will be a bone of contention between customer and developer as to who will bear this, he said.

Coupled with the new regulator Rera, GST will increase paperwork and thus the overall cost, Menon said.

However, Knight Frank India Chairman Shishir Baijal said like the note-ban, GST would trigger some momentary disturbances but augur

well for the industry in the long term."The intention of GST is to bring in

efficiency in the entire tax system, and its implementation will see some teething issues. But eventually it will pave the way for an extremely efficient tax system for the country," he said.

Echoing similar views, SILA founder and MD Sahil Vora said there will be pain and forced consolidation in the sector, but in the long-run everybody will benefit.

"But the affordable housing sector is happy as there is no tax on it. Since almost 70 per cent of the market caters to the middle to high income segment, GST could shift focus, particularly of smaller developers towards high vol-ume, low to medium income segment," RICS Global's Sachin Sandhir said.

Anarock Property Consultants Chairman Anuj Puri said the affordable housing sector will not be impacted by GST as there will be no tax under GST for affordable housing scheme.

CBRE South Asia's Ram Chandnani said GST will also attract international residential investment as it has been seen globally that a unified tax struc-ture has been one of the many catalysts for increased investments.

"Additionally, sectors ancillary to real estate will see improved supply chain efficiency with the removal of various federal tax barriers and cre-ation of a common market, acceler-ating the delivery of goods," he noted.

Samsung cuts manpower for 1st time in 7 years

AGENCIES

SEOUL: For the first time in seven years, the headcount of Samsung Electronics came down in 2016 mainly due to its restructuring in China, the company data showed on Sunday.

The number of employees of the world's larg-est smartphone and memory chip manufac-turer fell 5.2 per cent to 308,745 in 2016 from 325,677 the previous year, Yonhap news agency reported.

By region, domestic em-ployees dropped 3.8 per cent to 93,204, and those abroad declined 5.8 per cent to 215,541. As of the end of last year, the percentage of the employees at Samsung's companies abroad dropped 0.4 percent to 69.8 percent.

The number of Samsung

employees in China fell 17.5 percent to 37,070 last year from 44,948 the previous year while those in North and South America surged 8.5 per cent to 25,988. A company of-ficial attributed the cut in the number of employees partly

to the sale of its printing business to HP.

The proportion of female manag-ers and executives, however, rose to 12.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent last

year from 12.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively, from a year earlier. Sam-sung Electronics has 2,468 cooperative business partners across the globe as of the end of 2016 while maintaining 238 major production facilities, 53 distribution centres, 34 research and development centres, seven design centres and 73 service centres across the world.

India can be reliable source of fibres for Asean: Smriti Irani

AGENCIES

GANDHINAGAR: India on Sun-day said it can be a reliable sourcing partner for natural and man-made fibres for the Asean countries.

"India being the largest pro-ducer of cotton and jute and the second largest producer of Man-Made Fabrics (MMF) has the potential to act as a reliable sourcing partner for Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)," said Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani addressing a conference on Asean-India Cooperation at Textiles India 2017 here.

The Minister said that Indi-an textiles and apparel exports to Asean in 2016 were worth over $1.2 billion. "Export of textiles and apparels to Asean comprises 3 per cent of India's total exports to the world," she said. Irani said there are enormous opportunities for collaboration between India and Asean in capacity build-

ing, sharing of knowledge and technology, and mutual assis-tance in education, research and development.

"Enhancing digital and in-frastructure connectivity with Asean countries is a major pri-ority for India," she added.

Speaking at the event, neighbouring Myanmar's In-dustry Minister U Khin Maung Cho said its textile and apparel sector offers huge opportuni-ties for Indian business.

"Myanmar policies are at-tractive for foreign direct in-

vestment in various sectors, especially garments, textiles and agriculture," he said.

The conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) explored the value chains and institutional frameworks for collaboration in textiles between India and Asean countries under India's 'Act East' policy.

At least 65 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed during the three-day textile trade fair that con-cludes on Sunday.

No toll tax: Goods vehicles can zip past check points

AGENCIES

SECUNDERABAD: Vehiclescarry-ing goods need not pay octroi and toll tax at check points in Secunderabad, thanks to the new GST regime. The Minis-try of Defence (MoD) issued orders to the Secunderabad Cantonment to this effect, following which the Board stopped collection of octroi and toll tax from Saturday night.

The Secunderabad Canton-ment Board (SCB) has been collecting octroi and toll tax since 1965. The Board auctions the collection of octroi and toll tax and the highest bidder is authorised to collect the tax.

Soon after receiving orders from the MoD, Secunderabad Cantonment Board chief ex-ecutive officer SVR Chandra Sekhar directed SCB Tax Department officials to visit check posts and stop collec-tion of octroi and toll tax.

The contractor is collect-ing octroi and toll tax at 14 check posts covering major entry points in Cantonment jurisdiction. The SCB gave the rights of tax collection to SD

Abodes (India) Pvt Limited through an etender process for the year 2016-17. The con-tractor quoted the highest bid of `9.50 crore.The contract will lapse on October 11. But with the GST regime coming into effect on July 1, the SCB cancelled the contract and stopped collection of octroi and toll tax.

Every goods vehicle carry-ing things like furniture, food products (confectioneries, butter and other items), steel, and cement and entering into Secunderabad Cantonment sho uld pay octroi and toll tax. For instance, 3% tax is collected on wooden furniture and 6.25% on food products. As many as 50 types of goods were covered under octroi and toll tax.

"As per the orders received from the director-general, Defence Estates (DGDE), Del-hi, we have stopped collecting octroi and toll tax. On Sat-urday , a team of senior Tax Department officials visited the 14 check posts. These posts are now closed," SCB chief executive officer SVR Chandra Sekhar told STOI.

LEAP India plans to raise `100 crore via debt

AGENCIES

MUMBAI: City-based supply chain solutions company LEAP India plans to raise Rs 100 crore through debt to ex-pand wooden pallet capacity and increase its footprints.

"We have raised around Rs 110 crore last year through Series B funding from exist-ing as well as new investors. We are now looking at raising around Rs 100 crore through bank loans to meet our capi-tal expenditure plans," LEAP India Managing Director Sunu Mathew told PTI today.

"We are aiming to garner a significant market share in the asset pooling space which otherwise has been a highly fragmented and unorganised market," Mathew added.

Earlier, the company had raised funding from Mayfield and Rishabh Mariwala. The company also saw partici-pation from new investors like IndiaNivesh Growth

Fund, Sixth Sense and TCI Ventures.

Founded in July 2013, LEAP is fast expanding its customer base, pan-India network and technological capability in the business of renting and pooling wood-en pallets and foldable large containers.

It currently supplies about one million pallets made of wood imported from Rus-sia and 20,000 containers to over 200 Indian companies as well as MNCs in the FMCG, consumer durable, beverages and auto space.

We now plan to expand the capacity to three million pallets by 2020, Mathew said.

With the new investments and growing demand from customers, the company ex-pects its revenue to touch Rs 100 crore this fiscal from Rs 37 crore logged last year and it aims to achieve turnover of Rs 280 crore by 2020, he added.