Playstation vita Price and specifications in India

Sony launched the Playstation Vita here in India.  its priced at 20,000 Rs for Wifi only version and around 25,000 for Wifi + 3G version. Yeh its more costlier than PS3, but most smartphones today are costlier than laptops.

But the Play station Vita has a line up of top class hardware behind it, so i guess the price is justified.

Features and Specification of Sony Playstation Vita

CPU	ARM® Cortex™-A9 core (4 core)
GPU	SGX543MP4+
Dimensions	Approx. 182.0 x 18.6 x 83.5mm (width x height x depth) (tentative, excludes largest projection)
Rear touch pad	Multi touch pad (capacitive type)
Cameras	Front camera, Rear camera
Sound	Built-in stereo speakers
	Built-in microphone
Sensors	Six-axis motion sensing system (three-axis gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer), Three-axis electronic compass
Location	Built-in GPS
	Wi-Fi location service support
Keys / Switches	PS button
	Power button
	Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
	Action buttons (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
	Shoulder buttons (Right/Left)
	Right stick, Left stick
	START button, SELECT button
	Volume buttons (+/-)
Wireless communications	Mobile network connectivity (3G)
	IEEE 802.11b/g/n (n = 1x1)(Wi-Fi) (Infrastructure mode/Ad-hoc mode)
	Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR (A2DP/AVRCP/HSP)

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Smart phone market share in India (Vendor share)

Nokia remained the largest seller of smart phones in India. Its market share for 2011 remained at 46 percent. But there has been a significant fall in market share for Nokia in 2011 itself. In the beginning of the year Nokia had a share of 60 percent while it fell to 40% towards the end of the year. 

Chasing Nokia closed behind was Samsung, as per some reports Samsung has already replaced Nokia as the largest seller of smart phones in India, also note that Samsung had for some time replaced apple as the largest seller of phones globally. 

In 2011 Nokia didnt had any blockbuster product, but in 2012 Nokia might increase its market share with the lumia range, Samsung will be competition with Nokia directly in the windows phone category with their omnia range. Also Samsung has the widest range of Android phones which are being pushed aggressively.

Samsung has also announced Galaxy Ace 2 the successor to their highly successful galaxy Ace. I expect Motorola to pick up some market share this year, from what i heard Motorola defy and Motorola defy plus has been very successful in India. Also since motorola is now a google company we can expect some fire works soon. Sony  is also going to be a strong contender with their Xperia range.  Since they have bought out the stakes of Ericsson from the Joint venture, they will be in a better position to compete. Others are going to have a hard time unless they bring something unique to the table.

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Flipkart music service flyte to be launched

As reported by woikr flipkart's music service flyte will be launched this month. Flipkart will be selling songs at Rs 10 per song download. The downloaded music will be DRM free and can be used and shared between multiple devices. The purchased music can only be downloaded upto a maximum of 5 times.

Its a good thing that fliipkart is building a digital store, thou they might not have a ready market at the moment but its good to build your position from the very beginning. We certainly have access to illegal mp3 downloads the access is easy, and almost every song ever created can be found within less than a minute.  But this is not going to be the case for ever, recently a kolkata court asked isp's to block songs.pk which is the baap of all illegal music download sites, thou its still accessible easily on bsnl which i use. But things are not going to be same in future.

I think it will be much harder in future to access illegal music downloads, and when more companies get into legal music business they will take effort to block illegal downloads. We will see that within a year or two most of this popular illegal music download sites will be blocked, companies like T-series have been very active in this. We will see more companies joining hands and especially the online digital music stores will play a big role in curbing illegal downloads.

Coming back to flipkart's flyte. The pricing is not right as an introductory pricing strategy,  the pricing should have been 1rs per song. No body is going to pay 10rs when already the free download is available and could be downloaded much faster than from flipkart. The point that you will have to go through all the payment procedures to buy a song will make it very time consuming, instead of making it easier it will just make it more annoying and time consuming.

What flipkart should have done is to price the song at 1rs and then give 100rs free bonus to purchase this music. This would not only bring customers buying music, it will also make them a buyer of other flipkart products. It could have been a very good strategy for customer acquisition.

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Samsung galaxy ace 2 launched

Building on the success of Samsung galaxy Ace, Samsung has launched samsung galaxy Ace 2. Thou its not yet known when its going to be available in India and at what price, but we can assume it to be around 17 to 18 k during the initial launch.

The main differentiation between Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Ace 2 is the front camera and the 4GB internal storage, and are the much required features, apart from that there is an OS upgrade, Galaxy Ace 2 will run Android Ginger bread. In the connectivity department galaxy ace 2 has 3g at 14.4 MBPS connectivity.

Look wise thou its similar to galaxy Ace but there are some changes in the curvature, the edges are much rounder also there is change in the home button at the bottom of the screen. In terms of looks galaxy Ace is much superior to Galaxy Ace 2.  Galaxy Ace looks ditto like an iphone also apple had sued them for copying the design. Now since the new version is being launched there will be a drastic price wall for Galaxy Ace, so if you are planning to buy, its better to wait for a month or two.

Below are the detailed specification and features of Samsung Galaxy Ace 2

Network	HSDPA 14.4Mbps  900/2100EDGE/GPRS      850/900/1800/1900
Process	800MHz Dual-Core Processor
Display	3.8” WVGA(480×800) PLS TFT
OS	Android 2.3(Gingerbread)
Camera	Main(Rear): 5 Megapixel Auto Focus Camera with FlashSub(Front): VGA Camera
Video	Codec: MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, VC-1, VP8 Playback/ Recording: 720p
Audio	Codec: MP3, AAC, AAC＋, eAAC＋, WMA, FLAC, VorbisMusic Player with SoundAlive3.5mm Ear Jack, Stereo FM Radio with RDS
Value-added Features&Services	Samsung TouchWiz / Samsung L!ve Panel UX
	Samsung Apps
	Samsung Kies / Samsung Kies air
	Samsung Hub- Social HubIntegrated Messaging(Email, SNS), Contacts, Calendar Sync- Music Hub- Game Hub
	Samsung Hub Widget - Music Hub/ Game Hub
	Samsung ChatON mobile communication service
	Polaris
	GPS/ Glonass
Connectivity	Bluetooth technology v 3.0USB 2.0Wi-Fi b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct
Sensor	Accelerometer, Digital compass, Proximity, NFC (optional)
Memory	4GB User memory ＋ 768MB (RAM)microSD (up to 32GB)
Dimension	62.2 x 118.3 x 10.5 mm, 122g
Battery	Standard battery, Li-ion 1,500 mAh

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Enable 3g on Samsung Galaxy Ace

When i bought Galaxy ace phone i was in an area that should have 3g access but there was no 3g sign being shown. And since tria was recently making some noise about not allowing 3g spectrum sharing between networks i thought may be 3g is not available on vodafone in kerala.

Generally when you put a sim card in the 3g phone and if its in 3g area it should automatically connect to the 3g network. But that doent happen in Samsung Galaxy Ace which i realized after  i tried an idea sim (Idea has 3g licence in kerala) to check if its catching 3g but to my dismay there was no 3g connection displayed. I have used e63 with 3g before and in that device 3g was always detected automatically when in 3g area.

Finally after some tinkering i was able to access vodafone 3g in kerala on my Galaxy Ace. My version of galaxy ace uses ice cream sandwich so it could be possible that your version might be different and the options and menu might not be same as mine.

1. Make sure you have activated 3g by sending the respective 3g activation sms to your operator.
2. Once 3g is activated for your device now go to settings --> Wireless and networks
3. Choose mobile  network settings, make sure that you have activated 'Use packet data' option.
4. In the network mode by default it would be GSM/WCDMA (Auto mode), now change that to WCDMA only. Make sure you are in an area that has 3g coverage.
5. Now after some time you will see HSPA / 3G logo near your network tower. 
6. Now connect to the internet. Surf for a while then again go to setting and change your network mode back to GSM/WCDMA auto mode.

Once you have done this your mobile will pick up 3g signal whenever its available and switch back to 2g EDGE connection when 3g is not available

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