Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal's recent comments on large e-commerce players have reignited the debate about their impact on smaller offline retailers. On Wednesday, Goyal said that the rapid growth of e-commerce in India is a "cause for concern" and is diminishing the market share of small, mom-and-pop stores by offering high-margin products such as consumer electronics and apparel at discounted rates.
Following in Apple's footsteps, Alphabet - Google's parent company - is in advanced talks with Foxconn to manufacture Pixel smartphones in Tamil Nadu, an industrial state which will also double up as drone-manufacturing hub for the US tech giant soon. According to a state government release, officials from Google will soon visit Chennai to meet Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin to hold discussion on manufacturing of Google Pixel near Chennai.
PC maker Lenovo India will start manufacturing 50,000 GPU-based AI servers in India next year, the company said on Tuesday. Besides this, Lenovo announced setting up its fourth largest research and development centre in Bengaluru. Lenovo India managing director Shailendra Katyal said that the company will make servers locally and also export them from its manufacturing unit in Puducherry.
While war rooms are set up closer to the sales, warlike preparations go into it almost 12 months in advance to ensure that on D-day the firm gives its best to its customers.
Finnish phone manufacturer Human Mobile Devices (HMD Global), which acquired the Nokia brand name from Microsoft, is planning to make India a key manufacturing hub for its phone exports. The company only began exporting late last year with the Nokia 105 Classic. What started mainly with feature phones will now extend to smartphones - it announced the global launch of models under the HMD brand for the first time a few days ago and these will be available in India too.
The much-delayed decadal census exercise and the work to update the National Population Register (NPR) are likely to begin early 2025 and the data will be declared by 2026, thus changing future census cycles completely, official sources said.
E-learning and work from home have forced a section of feature phones users to shift to smartphones.
The Gujarat government has decided to provide financial assistance of up to Rs 1,500 to farmers in the state for purchasing a smartphone, as per a notification issued by the state agriculture department.
Premium mobile device maker Apple will start selling iPhone 16 series smartphones from September 20 onwards, sources aware of the development said. The company for the first time has plans to start assembling iPhone Pro Series in India but those models will start selling at a later date, the source said. "The entire iPhone 16 lineup will be available across the country tomorrow," an Apple India spokesperson said.
The filing of Swiggy's DRHP has led to direct comparisons with Zomato, which is a direct competitor in food delivery and the fast-growing quick-commerce segment where Blinkit (owned by Zomato) faces off against Instamart (and Zepto). In Q-commerce, Flipkart, Amazon, Reliance and Big Basket are all entering the space. All of them have deep pockets, hence competitive intensity will rise going forward.
Home-grown mobile phone company Lava International has become the first Indian brand to launch 5G smartphones for domestic consumers. The smartphone launched under the brand name 'Agni' has been developed by Lava in India and is getting manufactured at its plant in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. "The purpose of launching Agni is to give Indian consumers the choice of a made in India 5G smartphone for Indians by an Indian company. "We wanted to establish before people that there can be an Indian brand which is technology oriented. "We are second in the world to launch a 5G smartphone on Mediatek Dimensity 810 chipset," Sunil Raina, president & business head, Lava International told PTI on the sidelines of the launch.
British rock band Coldplay on Sunday added a third show to the Mumbai leg of its "Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025" citing "phenomenal demand", hours after fans expressed disappointment over long virtual queues on the online ticket platform BookMyShow.
Can the launch of smartphones under its own brand name by Finnish company HMD Global - despite having a licence to use the Nokia brand which it bought from Microsoft - help it regain its once dominant position in the mobile phone sweepstakes in India, where it was once routed? In 2009, Nokia was the country's largest MNC with revenues of $4 billion and a market share touching 80 per cent in 2010. After this, its fortunes fell. Although it had been the first global player to set up an assembly plant, not only to assemble phones for the local market but for exports, it had to shut down operations in 2014.
The highest-ever goods and services tax (GST) evasion has been done by the online money gaming industry.
Indian kiranas are agile enough to face the q-com challenge, but it's going to be a tough fight, notes Ambi Parameswaran.
All borders of the national capital will be sealed for the entry of commercial and heavy vehicles by Thursday midnight apart from heavy police deployment, they said.
'When the bombing happened in the Taj Mahal hotel in 2008, that was a very sad moment, but he really took care of the people, took care of everybody and that was when you saw some of his best moments.' 'There are some things which we will never forget. That is when the best of a person comes out.'
Even if 5G is not launched by operators this year, the handsets market will certainly witness a strong supply ecosystem for 5G ready smartphones in 2021.
The CRPF has categorised phones into two categories -- smartphones and mobile phones. The basic difference given for these two is recording facilities via camera and use of the internet.
Musculoskeletal disorders were more common among students with higher smartphone use.
Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani on Thursday said Jio and Google have jointly developed a power-packed and affordable smartphone 'JioPhone Next', which will be available in the market from September 10. Ambani promised that JioPhone Next will be the most affordable smartphone not just in India but globally. Speaking at RIL's annual general meeting, Ambani asserted that an ultra-affordable 4G smartphone is essential to make India '2G-mukt' (free of 2G).
While the record shipments reflects the prevailing mood at the time, the exponential rise in Covid cases in the country has turned the tide since.
The government will investigate a claim that WhatsApp accessed the microphone of smartphone users while the phone was not in use, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday.
There were certainly qualities adhering to the Tata Group, which emanated from the persona of Ratan Tata. Most notable of these would be the low profile he maintained, which sharply contrasted the in-your-face celebrity status, celebration of wealth and pursuit of importance many of liberalised India's rich, love, notes Shyam G Menon.
Have you wondered how many days of work -- depending on your net monthly income -- you would have to put in to buy the top-end iPhone 16 Pro?
Chinese mobile brands are deeply entrenched in the Indian market. A move to bar them may send a bold diplomatic message. But its cost for the local industry is anybody's guess. In the event that Chinese brands face curbs, two handset makers - Samsung and Apple - squarely stand to gain.
This year will be the one when GenAI becomes a part of the daily lives of people around the world.
The entire census and NPR exercise is likely to cost the government over Rs 12,000 crore, the officials said.
'How casually some people say cruel things online that they would never dare say in person.'
Goods and services tax (GST) collections from mobile device companies, amounting to Rs 1.82 trillion between 2020-21 (FY21) and 2023-24 (FY24), have already generated more than five times the revenue for the government compared to the Rs 34,149 crore allocated under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile devices over six years ending 2025-26 (FY26). Currently, the GST on mobile devices stands at 18 per cent.
Two sons return to their dead father's village to keep alive memories, and are the only ones living in the crumbling hamlet, discovers A Ganesh Nadar.
Apart from bringing new suppliers on board, Xiaomi is also hoping to take advantage of the newly launched PLI scheme that offers incentives on incremental production of smartphones with 2020 as the base year.
In spite of being attacked from all corners, a faltering supply chain and negative sentiments soaring high among the local consumers, top Chinese smartphone brands gained market share during the most critical phase - the April-June quarter of this year.
While the north district will get 346 Closed Circuit Television cameras, the central district will be allotted 354 cameras, officials said.
Foxconn's business in India has grown to over $10 billion till 2024.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel reported more than 2.5 times jump in its consolidated profit to Rs 4,160 crore in the April-June quarter of 2024-25 compared to the year-ago period driven by an improvement in average revenue per user and an exceptional gain of Rs 735 crore. The company had posted a profit of Rs 1,612.5 crore in the same period a year ago. The consolidated revenue from operations of Bharti Airtel increased by 2.8 per cent to Rs 38,506.4 crore during the reported quarter from Rs 37,440 crore in the June quarter of the last year.
To burnish production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes, the government is considering an overhaul of some of them relating to sectors such as textiles and pharma, and making incentive payments quarterly, officials in the know said. In a bid to cut the delay in processing incentive claims, the government is looking at switching to a quarterly disbursement of incentives. Currently, in most schemes, incentives are annual.
Dixon Technologies' January-March quarter (Q4) results came in well below expectations, but the potential for signing up a new mobile client, and plans for backward integration into display manufacturing kept investors happy. Dixon's Q4FY24 revenue grew 52 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 4,660 crore, below Street consensus, due to weakness in consumer electronics (Rs 890 crore) and home appliances (Rs 294 crore) segments.
Sukanya Verma lists fun things you can do, inspired by Bollywood, when it's raining cats and dogs outside.
Even as most manufacturers are still assessing the overall impact on their businesses, early projections suggest the market may grow at its lowest ever rate, in 2020.