Announcing the launch of the Samsung 2012 Smart television series, Mr. Raj Kumar Rishi. Vice President, AV Business, Samsung India said, “Samsung’s global leadership in televisions has rested on our continued thrust on innovation and excellence. In India too, we have been the first to introduce the latest, innovative technology products such as LED TVs, 3D TVs and now 2012 Smart Television series. Samsung’s 2012 TV and AV strategy rests on three pillars: Smart Interaction, Smart Content, and Smart Evolution, and our 2012 Smart television range exemplifies the same. I am confident that the new Smart television range will help us create new segments and further fuel the growth of the flat panel television market in India.”

As the Smart TV platform of choice, Samsung provides consumers access to the widest variety of premium content available, with over 1,500 apps offered worldwide. In 2012, Samsung is taking content one step further and evolving the way consumers discover and access apps—through a new Smart Hub that features a simpler, more personable UI in Full HD. Samsung’s Smart TVs also provide a much faster Smart TV experience powered by a new dual-core processor. Further, Samsung’s AllShare Play, the essential tie between Samsung’s products, content and services allows content to be pushed or pulled—regardless of the user’s location—from device to device and device to cloud for limitless sharing. AllShare Play enables consumers to push content manually to the cloud or pull the content directly from their Smart TV or other mobile devices.

Further, Samsung has strengthened its Smart TV content experience through the introduction of new exclusive services. The first-of-their kind services allow for easier content sharing among families across TVs and a number of connected personal devices.

•  Family Story allows users to share photos, post messages & chat in real time with family and friends Fitness allows consumers to access exercise content and track progress both on the TV and on the go.
•  Kids offers a wealth of kid-friendly content that kids can access and parents can control and monitor.

Finally, Samsung’s Evolution Kit—an industry first—will allow consumers to easily and cost-effectively enjoy the latest technology services on their TV. With a simple slot-in at the back of select 2012 Samsung Smart TV models, consumers can keep pace with rapid advancements in both TV hardware and software—without needing to purchase a new set every other year. This makes Samsung the only consumer electronics company to offer this evolving TV solution. The ‘ES series’ of Samsung Slim LED televisions use edge-lit LED technology and offers excellent contrast and brightness with a Dynamic Contrast ratio of 3.5 million:1, are ultra Slim, consume 40% less power and have excellent durability. The Samsung Smart televisions, including LED and Plasma models, are priced in the range between Rs 37,700 to Rs 273,000.

“Even as we work towards enhancing the Indian consumers’ experience by introducing India relevant applications for Smart televisions, we are also introducing new LED television models that have been especially developed for India,” said Mr. Raj Kumar Rishi, Vice President – AV Business, Samsung India. Samsung has launched the EH Series of LED TV in the screen sizes between 26” to 46” across Series 4, 5 and 6. The EH series uses back-lit LED technology and offers better viewing experience than LCD Televisions at similar price points. Compared to conventional LCD TVs, the EH series offers richer colours, better motion clarity, have a narrow bezel, consume 50% lower electricity (than comparable LCD models) and offers a Triple Protector. Triple Protector ensures protection against electrical surges and lightning as well as humidity. The Samsung EH Series is priced between Rs. 24,000 to Rs 94,900. “Based on the launch of our new ES series Smart televisions as well as the EH Series of LED TVs, we are expecting LED TVs to contribute to 70% of our total Flat Panel TV sales,” said Mr. Rishi. Samsung’s entire Flat Panel TVs product portfolio (LED, LCD and Plasma) has models that are priced in the range between Rs. 12,800 to Rs. 273,000.

Speaking on the announcement, Mr. Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems said, “Support services for devices like the Tablet has always been an issue with Indian customers. With our widespread and robust infrastructure framework and unique features like the HCL Touch button, the customer can gain anytime access to our support personnel to trouble shoot problems. As a company we have a long history and have over the years created a large and incomparable service network that today penetrates across cities, towns and rural hinterland. With the Tablet market now maturing it’s expected that a range of products will be introduced, but we at HCL Infosystems have always focused on customer experience and feel a robust distribution network and most importantly a widespread support and service network is critical. I don’t think any other tablet player in the market can match up to the service footprint that we provide.”

The U1 will have access to the unmatched support and service infrastructure spread over 4000+ cities. This network is extensive and covers all the regions of the country. With the 24X7 one touch buttons, customers can reach out to service personnel through a chat and get a quick redress of his problems or which can be escalated quickly.

ME Tab U1 is expected to lead the way in creating different usages for different segments of consumers.  The U1 is packed with 17 local ready to use applications, sports a 7 inch 800X480 Pixel Capacitive Screen and has a 1Ghz processor with high performance and low power CPU. The tablet comes with a Front Camera and 512 MB RAM, with an internal memory of 4GB expandable to 32GB. HCL ME U1 also has a full USB, mini USB and a Micro SD card slot. It has a robust 3600 mAH battery and one of the only products in the market with an option of 3G data connectivity through USB Modem. The tablet also enables an exclusive access to the ME App store which has over 10000 applications capturing the latest and the best android apps in the world for U1 users. The U1 also provides for Wi-fi connectivity.

The HCL ME U1 also will come with free goodies worth Rs 3000 and bundled offers, which include offers on Hungama (free unlimited downloads for three months), Cleartrip.com (Discounts on Air Tickets), and Think Free Office. Some of the pre loaded applications that are extremely relevant for the Indian Consumers are – 3D Digital Weather Clock, Cleartrip, ME Apps, HCL Touch, Hungama, ibibo Ibrowser, LinkedIn, Moneycontrol, Ninja Run, Twitter, Naukri among others.
The U1 will be available in stores across the country from April 2012 onwards.

All four headsets were designed specifically for companies looking for a cost-effective means of deploying headsets across an organization and to accommodate for the different working styles and environments without compromising on quality.

In addition to headset solutions for light to heavy users the Jabra UC VOICETM series features a portable headset developed for today’s virtual offices that is the industry’s first corded UC headset with a behind-the-ear wearing style and discreet form factor for video conferencing.

“Today there are approximately 7.8 million users of UC,” said Ralph Ede, Managing Director – South Asia Jabra. “By 2015 that number is expected to skyrocket to 49.5 million.  Optimization of these investments by adding the voice dimension to the UC experience and attaching headsets that offer superior sound, comfort and build will have a tremendous impact when wanting to ensure the right ROI.”

With so many new users coming from a traditional desk phone environment, the single most important factor for successful deployment and adoption of the technology is the headset, which completes the UC experience. With a series of easy-to-use UC headsets Jabra’s new headsets pave the way for faster end-user adoption of the technology.

And as more companies deploy UC there is a growing realization that audio plays a vital role in the success of the UC deployment. While the audio quality at both ends of a UC conversation is critical, there are many other factors that make a headset perform beyond expectations.

Strategic Development

With its new Jabra UC VOICETM series, Jabra builds on a long tradition of user-driven innovation and developing high-performance headset solutions. As the first company to have headsets optimized for Microsoft’s Office Communicator Jabra has a history of maximizing the benefits of UC with headsets that are comfortable, easy to use and at the forefront of the development.

“In essence, this is a whole new category of cost-effective headsets,” said Ralph Ede.  “The four headsets in the Jabra UC VOICETM series are both powerful and economical.  They’re simple, durable, have superb audio and come from Jabra’s years of experience creating an award-winning portfolio.

“The new iPad redefines the category Apple created less than two years ago, delivering the most amazing experience people have ever had with technology,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The new iPad now has the highest resolution display ever seen on a mobile device with 3.1 million pixels, delivering razor sharp text and unbelievable detail in photos and videos.”

The new iPad’s Retina display delivers four times the number of pixels of iPad 2, so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels when held at a normal distance, making web pages, text, images and video look incredibly sharp and realistic. The 3.1 million pixels in the Retina display are more than one million more pixels than an HD TV, and with 44 percent increased color saturation the new iPad displays colors that are unbelievably richer, deeper and more vivid. Movies are now capable of playing at full 1080p HD-resolution, delivering an incomparable viewing experience on a mobile device.

The powerful new A5X chip with quad-core graphics was specifically designed by Apple to deliver a fast, responsive user experience while supporting the incredible Retina display. With double the graphics performance of the A5 chip, the A5X provides a superb balance between performance and power efficiency so users can enjoy all the benefits of the stunning new display while experiencing a smooth Multi-Touch™ interface, immersive gameplay, incredible visual depth and all-day battery life that iPad is known for delivering.

The 5 megapixel iSight camera features advanced optics for taking stunning pictures and recording full HD video. Backside illumination allows you to take great photos in low-light conditions and a new video image stabilization feature removes the bumps and shakes typically seen when filming with a hand-held device. Images can be enjoyed on the large Retina display, then edited, enhanced and easily shared with friends and family using the built-in Photos app on iPad.

iPad Wi-Fi + 4G with built-in next generation 4G LTE has the most comprehensive support for fast networks worldwide including HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA, and now both CDMA and GSM iPad users have the ability to easily roam internationally. The world-ready iPad delivers blazing download and upload speeds so web pages load incredibly quickly and email with large attachments can be sent and received easily. Personal Hotspot can be used to share the fast network connection on your iPad with up to 5 other devices using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB**.

With iOS 5.1, the latest update to the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, the new iPad has a number of new features and enhancements including: a redesigned Camera app with video stabilization technology; the ability to delete photos from Photo Stream; support for dictation in English, French, German and Japanese; and Personal Hotspot. iOS 5.1 also works seamlessly with iCloud®, a breakthrough set of free cloud services including iTunes® in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, that works seamlessly with your iPhone®, iPad, iPod touch®, Mac® or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content and push it to your devices. When content changes on one of your devices, your other devices are updated automatically.

The new iPad also supports dictation, another amazing way to get things done just using your voice. Instead of typing, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard, then say what you want to say and the new iPad listens. Tap done, and iPad converts your words into text. You can use dictation to write messages, take notes, search the web and more. Dictation also works with third-party apps, so you can update your Facebook status, tweet, or write Instagram captions.

Apple also introduced the iPhoto® app, along with major updates to iMovie® and GarageBand®, completing its suite of iLife® apps for iOS. iLife and the iWork® apps, Pages®, Keynote® and Numbers®, have all been updated to take advantage of the new iPad Retina display. iPhoto includes breakthrough Multi-Touch features so you can use simple gestures to sort through hundreds of photos and find your best shots, enhance and retouch your images using fingertip brushes and share stunning photo journals with iCloud. iMovie now gives you the ability to create amazing Hollywood-style trailers as you record HD video, and GarageBand introduces Jam Session, an innovative and fun new feature that allows a group of friends to wirelessly connect to play instruments and record music together live on their iOS devices.

iPad runs almost all of the over 585,000 apps available on the App Store™, including more than 200,000 native iPad apps, from a wide range of categories, including books, games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. The iTunes Store® puts the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store at your fingertips with a catalog of over 20 million songs, over 90,000 TV episodes and over 15,000 movies. The new iBooks® 2 app for iPad lets users experience an entirely new kind of ebook that’s dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks created with Apple’s new iBooks Author offer gorgeous, fullscreen ebooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more.

Pricing & Availability
The new iPad Wi-Fi models will be available in black or white on Friday, March 16 for a suggested retail price of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model and $699 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad Wi-Fi + 4G for either AT&T or Verizon will be available for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores, and select Apple Authorized Resellers. iPad will also be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, UK and the US Virgin Islands on Friday, March 16. Customers can begin pre-ordering their new iPad today, and the incredible iPad 2 is now offered at a more affordable price of $399 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and just $529 (US) for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G model.

Huawei’s SoftMobile can optimize network architecture, achieve dynamic resource sharing, and improve user experience. The solution of macro-macro and macro-micro coordination can decrease interference between sites. Macro-macro coordination can improve the site throughput.  And network capacity can be improved with macro-micro coordination.

Visitors to Huawei’s booth at MWC can experience live demonstrations of Networker, Huawei’s user-side application for Monetizing QoE (Quality of Experience), which can be easily installed in smart terminals. Using Networker, visitors can see real-time displays of current data rate, available data rate, volume quota, and subscription status. The Networker software solution encourages users to upgrade their subscriptions for higher bandwidth, volume top-ups, and temporary boosts of speed via one-touch purchases.

Also introduced was the concept of Cloud EPC, Huawei’s innovative concept for the future evolution of packet core networks operating on three layers: infrastructure, virtualization, and applications. The infrastructure level involves the modularization, unification, and standardization of underlying facilities to improve capabilities and performance; the virtualization level supports multiple logical network elements to dynamically share the infrastructure layer’s network resources; the virtualization layer utilizes an open API (Application Programming Interface) for the application layer to facilitate mobile broadband service innovation, accelerates development cycles of third-party applications, and helps improve QoE.

Huawei’s SoftMobile solutions help operators build open and profitable mobile broadband connections by solving capacity congestion, providing end-to-end network coordination, and facilitating a variety of flexible strategies to improve user experience.

The Huawei mobile broadband cloud acceleration solution leverages protocol optimization, content identification and code optimization to lower data traffic in operators’ network by 20%, greatly reducing network traffic load and improving network capacity. At the same time, the solution features the most advanced data caching technology, which can reduce operators’ bandwidth consumption by 40% to 70%, bringing a significant reduction of bandwidth leasing cost. In terms of end-user access rate, server upgrades are enhanced via cloud, boosting the access speed of data devices by 30% to 80%.

“With the growing use of data devices such as data cards, mobile hotspots, smartphones and tablets, the proportion of user data in the mobile network has increased exponentially, creating congestion in the global mobile network which results in user frustration,” says Wu Shi Min, President, Huawei Device Mobile Broadband Product Line. “Huawei’s mobile broadband cloud acceleration solution provides a comprehensive solution that not only addresses network congestion through cloud, pipe and device, but also includes planning tools that help operators optimize transmission capabilities.”

As a leading mobile broadband brand, Huawei continues to lead the global broadband industry with the launch of the world’s first mobile broadband cloud acceleration solution. As at the end of 2011, Huawei’s mobile broadband products have been used by over 530 operators in more than 150 countries and have shipped over 200 million units. Huawei’s integrated device and pipe and integrated cloud and device solutions have been creating greater values for mobile operators around the world, as well as providing the latest and fastest mobile internet experience to global consumers.

The market for smart devices – from smartphones and tablets to internet-connected TVs – is growing rapidly. Some industry analysts expect a compounded annual growth rate of over 25% through to 2015 for smart mobile devices. At the same time, smart device platforms are becoming standardized with operating systems like Android supported on a wide range of devices.

“These trends mean consumers increasingly expect to have access to the same content across all their smart devices. Our LifeVibes solutions are designed to provide this sort of any content, on any device experience – and make it easy and enjoyable,” says Peter van de Berg, Marketing Director, NXP Software.

On the NXP Software stand, visitors can see what this means in action. For instance, the LifeVibes social TV solution allows people to drag and drop between the player and the social control panel. So if people like what they are watching, they can simply drag it to the second screen to chat about it on Facebook or watch with friends.

The other product on show, LifeVibes QuickPlayer, is a powerful solution for service providers who want to bring TV and VOD services to a wide range of smart devices. It allows easy deployment of video services via an App on over 700 models of Android phone and tablet, as well as on iOS devices, and it enables content monetization through its application hardening solution.

These products are part of a range of LifeVibes smart player solutions that bring the latest entertainment experiences to smart devices. Others include LifeVibes CineXPlayer (selected for this year’s Mobile Premier Awards), which combines cinema-style 3D video and surround sound in a single App.

Most recently, NXP Software has contributed to the voice enhancements framework for Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). This enables easy integration of its LifeVibes VoiceExperience software, which incorporates NXP Software’s state-of-art noise suppression, acoustic echo cancellation and HD Voice.  VoiceExperience meets the performance requirements of all major mobile operators, including AT&T, which sets one of the highest standards in the industry for 2-microphone devices. The performance of VoiceExperience has been independently verified by Metrico Wireless.

“Multimedia is one of life’s pleasures, so it’s important to be able to offer consumers high-quality experiences on Android devices. That’s why we joined the OHA early on and enhanced the Android multimedia framework for our customers,” says Peter Van de Berg, Marketing Director, NXP Software. “And we’re committed to bringing even more smiles to people’s faces with exciting multimedia experiences on future Android devices as well.”

“The threat landscape continued to evolve in 2011, and we saw a significant shift in motivation for cyber attacks,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “Increasingly, we’ve seen that no organization, platform or device is immune to the increasingly sophisticated and targeted threats. On a global basis, we are conducting more of our personal and business transactions through mobile devices, and this is creating new security risks and challenges in how we safeguard our commercial and personal data.”

Malware

The overall growth of PC-based malware actually declined throughout Q4 2011, and is significantly lower than Q4 2010. The cumulative number of unique malware samples in the collection still exceeds the 75 million mark. In total, both 2011 and the fourth quarter were by far the busiest periods for mobile malware that McAfee has seen yet, with Android firmly fixed as the largest target for writers of mobile malware.

Contributing to the rise in malware were rootkits, or stealth malware. Though rootkits are some of the most sophisticated classifications of malware, designed to evade detection and “live” on a system for a prolonged period, they showed a slight decline in Q4. Fake AV dropped considerably from Q3, while AutoRun and password-stealing Trojan malware show modest declines. In a sharp contrast to Q2 2011, Mac OS malware has remained at very low levels the last two quarters.

Web Threats

In the third quarter McAfee Labs recorded an average of 6,500 new bad sites per day; this figure shot up to 9,300 sites in Q4. Approximately one in every 400 URLs were malicious on average, and at their highest levels, approximately one in every 200 URLs were malicious. This brings the total of active malicious URLs to more than 700,000.

The vast majority of new malicious sites are located in the United States, followed by the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea and Germany. Overall, North America housed the largest amount of servers hosting malicious content, at more than 73 percent, followed by Europe-Middle East at more than 17 percent and Asia Pacific at 7 percent.

Spam

At the end of 2011, global spam reached its lowest point in years, especially in areas such as the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina and South Korea. Despite the drop in global levels, McAfee Labs found that the present spearphishing and spam are highly sophisticated.

Overall botnet growth rebounded in November and December after falling since August, with Brazil, Columbia, India, Spain and the United States all seeing significant increases. Germany, Indonesia and Russia declined. Of the botnets, Cutwail continues to reign supreme, while Lethic has been on a steady decline since last quarter. Grum made a significant comeback after a long decline, surpassing Bobax and Lethic by the end of Q4.

Data Breaches

The number of reports of data breaches via hacking, malware, fraud and insiders more than doubled since 2009, according to privacyrights.org, with more than 40 breaches publicly reported this quarter alone. The leading network threat this quarter came via vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows remote procedure calls. This was followed closely by SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. These remote attacks can be launched at selected targets around the globe.

“Consumer demand for premium content on smart phones and tablets is growing rapidly. As a global leader in enabling exciting multimedia experiences, NXP Software is keen to help service providers meet this demand. By partnering with Verimatrix, we have combined our know-how in high quality video and audio on mobile device platforms like Android with Verimatrix’s deep expertise in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services,” said Peter Van de Berg, Marketing Director, NXP Software.

This new version of LifeVibes QuickPlayer supports fast deployment of VCAS-secured video service applications across the wide range of Android-based devices on the market using the proven HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) adaptive bitrate protocol. It enables an enhanced security infrastructure for HLS that is fully compliant with the rigorous requirements for licensing premium content. Furthermore, LifeVibes QuickPlayer offers a “living-room quality” user experience. It ensures a fast start to playback, and maintains smooth viewing with no re-buffering, dropped service or visual artifacts even during network switches and variations in bandwidth availability.

“As the OTT video market matures, network operators are now able to blend Internet TV into their traditional services – from an operational, technology and revenue model perspective. This requires enhanced security functionality and options in order to deliver premium content to connected devices. Our partnership with NXP Software helps operators to deliver services on the broadest range of new mobile devices, while still maintaining the appropriate level of security,” said Steve Oetegenn, chief sales and marketing officer at Verimatrix.

ViewRight Web and VCAS™ for Internet TV are components of the VCAS 3 architecture, which addresses the new video marketplace with a proactive revenue security and enhancement approach for DVB broadcast, hybrid, and IPTV networks. The Verimatrix ViewRight Web client family is a robust package of portable security applications that provide enhanced security for HLS service delivery, including authentication and fine grain entitlement management for a variety of device categories, including PC/Macs, mobile handsets, tablets, set-top boxes and connected TVs.