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Times of India Tweeks a Junk Mag for iPad

 Tablets  2 Responses »
Feb 162012
 
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Even the most successful of businesses sometimes make asses of themselves with incomprehensibly stupid decisions.

Yesterday, it was the turn of India’s top newspaper group Times of India to display its jackass colors.

Not content with putting out iPad apps for its two flagship newspapers, Times of India and Economic Times, Times Internet Limited, the online arm of the publishing house, has partnered with an Indian startup Genwi to launch a weekly general interest magazine for the iPad called Tweek.

Tweek, like the two iPad newspapers of the Times group, is free. At least for now.

Times of India Tweek Magazine for iPadScreenshot of Tweek on iPad App Store

Times of India Tweek Magazine for iPadTweek – February 10, 2012 Issue

Old Content on New Medium

Apparently, the idea is not to create fresh content for the Tweek but to rehash existing material from the Times of India, Economic Times and other group publications and slap it on the iPad.

Say, what value does a rehashed magazine bring to iPad users who have infinite news choice via countless apps.

Zilch. Nada. Zip. Continue reading »

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 2:44 am  Tagged with: ,

Even with Dozens of Tablets & Price Cuts, Android Still has only 39% Marketshare

 Android, Digital Media, Tablets  No Responses »
Jan 262012
 
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Despite powering dozens of tablets including the Amazon Kindle Fire, a new survey shows Android’s market share in the tablet market at just 39.1% in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Something must be seriously wrong with the Android software if so many vendors including Sony, Acer, Asus, Samsung, Motorola etc are struggling to get some momentum for their devices.

So far the only way most Android Tablet vendors have been able to move their devices off the shelves is by repeatedly cutting prices to a few hundred dollars below comparable Apple iPad models.

But for those price cuts, Android’s marketshare would have been still lower.

Global Tablet OS Marketshare

The only Android tablet that’s gained some traction so far is the cheap $199 Amazon Kindle Fire.

Apple has been able to keep its tablet prices obscenely high because the competition has been unable to get its act together.

iOS Still Numero Uno

Apple iOS continues to be the tablet king with 57.6% of the tablet market in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a recent survey put out by Strategy Analytics.

Apple shipped 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter compared to 10.5 million units by all the Android vendors combined.

Global tablet shipments hit 66.9 million units in full-year 2011, surging 260% from 18.6 million in 2010.

It seems consumers are increasingly going in for tablets in preference to netbooks and even entry-level notebooks or desktops.

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 9:07 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Any Schmuck Can be an Author with Apple’s New iBooks Author Tool, But Should You?

 Books, Digital Media, Tablets  No Responses »
Jan 192012
 
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Apple today launched iBooks Author, an easy to use application for writers looking to publish their e-books for the iPad tablet.

Hell, even you schmucks can use the app to write an e-book on any topic and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore.

iBooks Author is available on the Mac App Store for free.

iBook Author

Ah, but there’s a catch here.

You need to have a Mac computer to use iBooks Author and a Mac ain’t free, kid. ;)

The cheapest Mac is the Mac Mini and that will cost you over $800 with a memory upgrade to 8GB, an Apple mouse and a decent monitor.

iBooks Author requires users to be running Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later.

iBook Author

Easy to Use

We just downloaded iBooks Author to our iMac and played with the app for a while.

iBooks Author is nicely done and simple for writers to use.

A no sweat app.

It rightly assumes that writers have little or no experience with publishing and makes the job easy with multiple tools that includes even basic things like templates.

For the heck of it, we picked a template and started playing with it.

Yes, with iBooks Author you can write directly into the app, preview it on the iPad and then publish it to the iBookstore from within the app.

Alternatively, you can write your stuff in your preferred app, say Word and then import it into iBooks Author.

There’s all the basic stuff like a choice of templates, ability to select font styles, size, add images, shapes, charts, tables, and Multi-Touch widgets etc.

Adding a photo to your e-book is so simple, particularly if you already have the image on the Mac. All you need to do is open iPhoto and drag and drop the picture into iBooks Author.

It took only a few moments for us to insert an image on the title page and another inside. The text automatically wrapped around the image. Voila, we were done.

Via a tab on the top right, the app lets you preview you the book on an iPad as you work on it.

What about Small-Time Writers?

Sure, the iBooks Author is an easy to use app for writers. Continue reading »

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 3:48 pm  Tagged with: ,

iPad Crushes Android in App Downloads

 Tablets  No Responses »
Jan 042012
 
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If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times.

The only tablet worth dicking around with is the Apple iPad.

The solid sales numbers for the iPad and dismal record of the Android tablets bears us out.

Time and again, we’ve seen prominent Android tablet vendors like Motorola, Blackberry, Samsung, Sony etc reduce their prices to better compete with Apple but to no avail.

Here’s one more piece of evidence that drives home our point that the only tablet worth buying is the iPad.

A new study by ABI Research has estimated that iPad users cumulatively downloaded three billion applications compared to 440 million downloads for all the Android tablets combined.

App downloads is perhaps the best indicator of a tablet’s popularity for what’s a tablet without apps – a mere paperweight.

By most accounts, the user experience of iPad owners is superior and that of the woebegone Android tablet owners inferior.

iPad Tablets - Cock of the WalkiPad – 3 Billion App Downloads

According to ABI Research’s practice director for mobile services Dan Shey:

Android is currently being used on many low end tablets that do not offer experiences anywhere near the iPad and this dampens the download momentum for users.

Apple offers 140,000 apps developed specifically for the iPad. In additions, tens of thousands of apps developed for the iPhone also work on the iPad.

We doubt there are even a few thousand dedicated Android tablet apps.

iPad downloads account for 19% of all app downloads on Apple devices including the iPhone, iPod touch and Mac.

From our own experience, there are tons of apps for the iPad including Indian TV channels like NDTV, newspapers like Times of India and Economic Times, books, Netflix, magazines (New Yorker) etc that keep us hooked to the device.

Recently a new app called Shahrukh Khan debuted on the iPad. No kidding.

SearchIndia.com does not share ABI Research’s enthusiasm that things will change as Android tablet vendors adopt the recently-released Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and accelerate product development to close up the specifications gap between their tablets, such as the Amazon Kindle Fire and the iPad.

By the way, did we hear someone say What about Aakash? ;)

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 12:42 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Sony S Tablet a Flop? Price Cut by $100

 Digital Media, Tablets  No Responses »
Jan 012012
 
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Sony appears to be joining the list of tablet vendors that have gone up against the might of the Apple iPad and ended up bloodied and bruised.

Not to mention the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and loss of face.

Discounts & More Discounts

First, in mid-December Sony announced a $50 discount for its recently launched S Tablet.

The discount was touted as a limited time promotion that would end on December 31.

Apparently, that $50 discount wasn’t enough to get the crowds excited (remember, only when HP brought prices of its now retired TouchPad to $99 did the masses buy the tablet).

Now, Sony has not only not ended the $50 discount on December 31 but tagged on an additional $50 discount for a total of $100 off.

This means, Sony’s 16GB S Tablet will now cost $400, instead of the $500 it was charging a few weeks back.

The 32GB version is also $100 cheaper as you can see from the below screenshot of the Sony U.S. web site:

Sony Slashes Price of S Tablet by $100

On August 25, the wise ones at the extraordinary SearchIndia.com blog had recommended a price of no more than $399 for the 16GB S tablet. Continue reading »

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 4:16 pm  Tagged with: ,

Tablet Craze Will Boost Shipments to 63.3m in 2011; Apple iPad King of Heap

 Digital Media, Tablets  3 Responses »
Dec 152011
 
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The market for PCs and laptops may be weak but tablet shipments continue to rise.

Based on robust demand in the fourth quarter, market researcher IDC raised its worldwide tablet shipments forecast in 2011 to 63.3 million units, up from its previous projection of 62.5 million units.

Tablet shipments into sales channels in the third quarter rose 23.9% on a sequential to 18.1 million units.

This represents an increase of 264.5% from the same quarter last year, but 5.8% below the original forecast of 19.2 million units.

Apple iPad Dominates

IDC expects Apple to have its best-ever quarter in 4Q11, and sees the iPad gaining more traction outside of the consumer market in 2012, specifically with enterprise and education markets.

Apple dominated worldwide tablet shipments in 3Q11 with 11.1 million units, up from 9.3 million units in 2Q11. That represents a 61.5% worldwide market share (down from 63.3% in 2Q11).

Apple iPad Dominates Tablet MarketApple iPad – Rules the Roost

Samsung was No-2 with 5.6% market share followed by HP with 5%, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color (4.5%) and Asus (4% ).

Following a poor reception to its TouchPad tablets, HP has exited the tablet business. Continue reading »

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 Posted by SearchIndia.com at 10:52 am  Tagged with: ,
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