VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

Vodafone Aircel look up ways to speed up NOFN e1424850277212 Vodafone, Aircel look up ways to speed up NOFNVodafone and Aircel have started talks with the government on how to speed up the much delayed national broadband project. The government recently setup a committee on NOFN to fastrack the project. The NOFN project has assumed greater importance after the announcement in August of the Digital India initiative, a programme to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. A way is to get private companies lay down optic fibre in the second phase of NOFN, which aims at providing broadband connectivity to 250,000 panchayats by December 2016 at an estimated cost of Rs 30,000 crore. Aircel had a workshop with the DoT and Bharat Broadband Network officials on how they can collaborate on the project and what they should do to build the high-speed data network. BBNL, a special purpose vehicle set up by the government in 2012 is responsible for manag...

F secure logo e1424849267400 New Delhi emerges as the top malicious city in 2014Sality, Ramnit, Trogan.LNK.Gen, Trogan.Script and Virtob are the top five malicious family detections and Delhi (20%), Hyderabad (9%), Chennai (9%) and Chandigarh (7%) were the top malicious cities in 2014, according to the detections from the “The state of Internet in India” Report, unveiled by F-Secure. The report affirms the rise of malware infections in the country and states Delhi as the most infected city in 2014. The report also states that banking-related malware has been consistently topping the chart in India. The “Ramnit” malware steals bank user names and passwords and it mostly spreads through USB removable drives. Furthermore, PCs in India are moving away from Windows XP. Downadup/Conficker infection is also on the decline over the past three years in India. Commenting during a press meet to announce these findings, Pekka Usva, Vice-President, Corporate Security, F-Secure, said, “Malwa...

indian smartphones e1424850983904 Indian smartphone market share in Q4 2014 comes downIt is the first time ever when the Indian smartphone market shrunk following a piling up of inventories by handset makers at the start of the October-December period. However, Samsung continued to maintain its leading position in the smartphone market with 22% share in the fourth quarter of 2014. Smartphones made up 35% of the overall mobile phone business in the country, which was nearly 3 times of its share in the same quarter of 2013. In Q4 2014, the smartphone market declined 4 percent while the feature phone market dipped 14 percent over Q3 2014. Apple has posted a tough competition to the Korean consumer electronics brand Samsung in Q4. According to IDC, online exclusive brands are hurting the Samsung brand in value for money category. Intex came out as the third largest smart phone vendor in India with 8% share, surpassing Lava during this Quarter. Lava however remains stable with a...

The government is expected to let Indian companies manufacturing 70% of their goods locally to venture into the burgeoning e-commerce space.  The proposal, which is set to go to the cabinet over the next few weeks, is a follow-up to an announcement made by finance minister Arun Jaitley in his maiden Budget. Sources said the department of industry policy and promotion (DIPP) will also define what constitutes an “Indian company” after some of the local players raised questions about it. Since then some of the Indian companies have approached the government, pointing to complete absence of clarity in the current policy regime. Some executives have also said that the retail trading policy drafted by the government has assumed that domestic players don’t have the capability to be in the sector as the rules discriminate against them. The new policy follows several rounds of consultations with some of the companies that want to enter the space... S ee more  

Facebook launches Ads Manager app for ioS devices. The app, called Facebook Ads Manager, is initially available on iOS, and allows its users to create and edit ads, track spending, view ad results, receive ad-related notifications, and more. These notifications can alert advertisers to things like ads that are coming up for expiration, when you’re nearing a spending limit, or other ad performance metrics, like Page Likes or how your ad it compares to other similar ad sets. The app’s simple interface also makes it possible to design ads from start to finish directly on your phone by selecting photos from your phone or pulling in Page posts, writing the ad text, and then targeting your desired audience using sliders and buttons to narrow down that audience by demographic information... See more