Time to look at Hotmail.. err.. Outlook.com again.

How many of you use gmail, raise your hands. Good! Now how many of you use hotmail? No one, that is understandable…

Hotmail, created by our own once famous Sabeer Bhatia and then sold to Microsoft is an online email client that is taking dust (In India) for some time now. I write in India because in Europe and many other nations it is widely used.

There are two predominant reasons for that-

One is that, in India, widespread internet (We are third largest in the world after all) came quite late and till then Gmail was launched so most Indians created their first profile in Gmail and unless the email client is particularly bad people tend to stick to the one they use.

It is like your mobile operator – You do not want to change it as it meant changing number. Not anymore with coming of MNP but email client still have that problem. Second is XBOX. People who buy it have to use windows live (which is Microsoft’s email client) for online gaming. In India gaming never took off until now thus making this way redundant.

Secondly, Gmail is an excellent webmail client. Rarely, there is a gripe against it and if any is usually ironed out quickly. With the emergence of Android the dependence on Gmail has increased as well but this has bred suspicion in people for Google as well. But these are all talks which can go on forever…

The point I want to make is- “Why fix if it ain’t broke?” And so Google is widely used.

Microsoft though has gone in a phase of complete reinvention. Almost all its products are getting a big over haul (I will discuss them in future posts) and Hotmail is one of them. It is nowOutlook.com and should be given a try definitely.

The first thing you will notice about Outlook.com is that it works with hotmail and windows live. Basically, with this Microsoft combines the two naming convention. Also, you can change your Id to something new with @outlook.com ending.

This was good for me personally as I wished to change the name. I think a few people might share this with me. Next comes the look and the feel of the interface that is in a word – Metro. Microsoft is in love with its new interface and wants you to love it too. In all honesty, it is not that difficult.

Outlook.com is not shabby at all. A clean blue interface with everything neatly arranged Microsoft has done it right. And it is fast and intuitive, something the previous Hotmail interface always lacked…

As I said, Gmail has done nothing wrong and there is absolutely no reason to leave that ship but it is also wise to not keep all your eggs in one basket. In that regard, Outlook.com gives a bright alternative. Besides, it has two advantages that Gmail does not have. One is integration with other Microsoft’s products. Let us admit it. What Google is online, Microsoft is offline.

Imagine your mail integrated with your email client and your Productivity suite. With Office 365 around the corner, it is prudent to have an Outlook email Id. Google productivity suite is good enough but in front of Microsoft Office it is just cute.

Second is Skydrive. Though technically, it comes under integration but I wanted to elaborate on it. It is basically a service of cloud storage like Dropbox, Ubuntu One( For ubuntu) and Box.net (Mobile) that comes from the Microsoft’s stable. Because of coming from Microsoft it integrates with Windows like no other. It acts like a folder and shows in shortcuts automatically. Yes, it can be done for others as well but it is slightly more tedious. There is no need to do that for Skydrive. Besides, it offers more storage (7GB) for free than other services.

Microsoft is doing real hard to woo its customers back and with Outlook.com I guess it is time to give it a shot.

If you have used Outlook.com, let us know what you feel about it…

The post Time to look at Hotmail.. err.. Outlook.com again. appeared first on India Business & Technology Hub.

Indian Application Development market to exceed $227 million in 2012

In 2012, Indian app market is expected to rise $227 billion, which is 22.6 percent higher than the previous year. According to the study by Gartner called “Market Trends: Application Development Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016”, the growth will be driven by the rising mobile application development, innovative development methodologies, open source software and software development modules.

A principal research analyst at Gartner said “apart from emerging dynamics of cloud and social computing; the application modernization will continue to be a solid reason for the the growth of application development”.

According to the report, domains that boost the Indian application development market include –

Cloud computing

Cloud computing has changed the concept of application development and the way applications are designed, tested and implemented. This resulted in a significant shift in the priorities of the apps. Today, nearly 90 percent of large, small and government agencies are using some aspect of cloud computing.

Cost is an important factor to choose cloud computing, but, the flexibility and speed to implement a new app is also the main reason behind cloud computing.

Open Source Software

The research and analyst firm Gartner, also expects the open source software to continue to extend its presence and put pressure on the industry leaders for the next 3-5 years. According to the prediction done by Gartner, at least 70 per cent of new enterprise Java applications will be deployed on an open source Java application server by the end of 2017.

Moreover, the open source tools will continue to eat away the revenue for some app development in the categories of – design, Web development and testing. The limited budgets and economic conditions compel to focus much on cost reduction, thus rendering the use of open source software in various apps.

The open source software is driven primarily by the success of NetBean and Eclipse. Due to which we can see a prominent change in the market by the small software providers who are looking for easy approach to offer their products.

Emerging trends

According to Asheesh Raina, the research analyst at Gartner, the emerging trends are leading the app demand towards newer architectures, business models, programming languages and user skills. Emerging mobile applications are transforming the app development space drastically and are one of the top three priorities at the enterprise level.

In a research, it is also found that, by 2013 CIOs are expecting more than 20 per cent of their employees to use tablets instead of laptops. This all resulted in evolving new apps and tools to meet the preferences and requirements of the latest devices.

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Comprehensive Indian Internet Usage Statistics [Report]

In a recent webcast titled “The Rise of India’s Digital Consumer”, the director of ComScore, Kedar Gavane provided interesting insights into the growth of internet usage in India over the twelve months ending in July 2012.

The Virginia-based Internet analytics firm focuses on supplying market intelligence data to clients that include the world’s biggest corporate giants. Data is obtained through complex software systems that focuses on population samples, after which appropriate adjustments are made to estimate the views of larger masses.

In spite of being widely trusted, comScore’s data collection exercises haven’t been free from controversy and data from competing firms has conflicted with that of comScore in the past.

In the webinar, the data presented was based on usage patterns that were studied on people aged 15 and above in the home and work environments.

Global Internet Trends and India’s Standing

ComScore highlights that the worldwide online audience has jumped 7%, with Asia-Pacific markets adding more than 40 million users.

India has been identified as the fastest growing online market during the same period, with a 41% rise. This is much higher than China (5%), Brazil(6%) and Russia (20%). With most online categories in Indian exhibiting an average reach below the global figures, the potential seems to be high.

India’s internet penetration has been estimated at 10%, with 124.7 million users going online during July 2012.

India’s audience is getting younger

ComScore has found 75% of the internet audience in India to be aged 35 years and below, promising to make it the youngest online population in the coming years. In the webcast, Kedar emphasized that the audience is only going to get younger in the future.

Females formed 39.3% of the total audience, and the sharpest growth was observed among male and female segments in the age-group 15 to 24.

Online Category Trends

High Growth Areas

comScore’s findings show the travel, search, social networking and news arenas to be growing sharply in India’s online world, crossing worldwide averages.

These are the ‘super seven’ categories pointed out by the data:

Categories	Year-on-year Growth %	July 2012 Reach %
Games	60	41
News	54	80.3
Search	43	91.5
Retail	43	59.9
Health	43	21.1
Social Networking	43	95.5
Travel	41	44

There’s an apparent high potential for retail, games and health, since they fall below worldwide trends.

The Top Ten Sites

Over the survey period, Google and Facebook topped the growth charts, at 59.7 and 52.1 million users respectively.

An interesting point to note is that the data shows a rise of over 10 to 40% in the frequency of user visits for the top ten sites.

Rise in News Consumption

The news category appears to be one of the most engaged, with up to 5 minutes spent on it by each unique visitor.

A growth of 54% has been noted in this category, with multiple means of accessing the news, including mobile devices. This is lesser than the global average of 80% but is catching up. Yahoo-ABC News Network leads from the front with a July 2012 reach of 20.4%, followed closely by The Times Of India at 18.7%. Other key players include New York Times Digital (11.3), HT Media Limited (11.1%), oneindia (9.6%), India Today Group (8.5%), IBN Live (7.9%) and NDTV (7%).

NRI Visits to Local Website

Another interesting set of data revolves around the non-resident Indian (NRI) unique visitors to some of the leading Indian websites.

These are the key sites that NRI’s visit, along with the percentage of the total unique visitors that they make up:

1. NDTV (35%)
2. IBNLive (22%)
3. The Times of India (36%)
4. Manorama (53%)
5. Rediff (17%)
6. In.com (32%)
7. Cricbuzz (55%)
8. ICICI Bank (12%)

comScore also concludes that the regional newspapers have the highest share of non-resident audiences and are the best way to connect with them.

The Online Retail Boom

As many as 3 in 5 internet users in India visit retail sites, which have registered a growth of 43% over the last year. The statistics indicate a close contest between Snapdeal and Flipkart in horizontal retail, and Jabong and Myntra in the lifestyle category, all of them fueled by aggressive marketing and growing demand.

July saw a total of 37.5 million unique visitors from India coming to retail sites, with the apparel sub-category being the fastest growing sub-category at a year-on-year growth of 362%. Consumer goods, sports equipment and home furnishing have shown promising signs of growth as well. Vertical retail segments are expected to grow the fastest in the coming months.

Growth in the Travel Segment

India’s online reach in the travel segment has crossed the worldwide averages, according to the ComScore statistics. Indian Railways tops the charts with a 19.2% reach in July 2012, followed by MakeMyTrip at 11.6% and Yatra Online at 8.3%

With a rise in people using private buses, redbus.in shows a reach of 2% during July.

e-Commerce Transactions in India

Direct debit or Netbanking is the most popular payment method as per figures from the second quarter of 2012, with a 58% share. Visa and MasterCard follow at 21% and 12% respectively.

IRCTC averages at $17 (INR 935) per transaction, while Flipkart indicates $35 (INR 1925) per transaction.

Facebook and its Continued Dominance

In the social networking space, Facebook has risen 47% in terms of unique visitors between the twelve-month survey period. Around 52 million users are indicated to have signed up.LinkedIn’s unique visitor count has risen 36%, a reflection of the decent show put up by the job market.

Orkut, which once used to be widely popular, has had its unique visitor count plunge by 69% – an indication of little attention from its parent company Google. Twitter use in India continues to be low, and the number of unique visits has risen just 5% to 3.8 million in July 2012.

The Rise of Entertainment

The unique visitor count for entertainment sites is indicated to have touched nearly 56 million in July 2012, up from nearly 41 million a year before. YouTube is a runaway leader in this category, with a reach of 53.7% at the end of July 2012. They are followed by CBS Interactive (14.8%) and Songs.pk (8.8%).

In spite of a fairly high reach of 89% in India, the entertainment category is still behind the worldwide figure of 94.1%.

Mixed Growth Witnessed in Other Categories

Business and finance has grown at 35%, with SBI being the most popular bank. ICICI Bank follows at the second position, and HDFC at the third.

Real estate has grown 38%, career services have grown 30% and the automotive category has shown a growth of 18%.

Online Video

This category has shown a growth of over 37.3% and the engagement figure is indicated to be 3.4 billion videos each month.

52% of all the videos belong to the entertainment category, and the soaring viewership in the video category has resulted in a corresponding boom in video advertising.

Growth in Mobile Engagement

Over the last year, the number of pages viewed on mobile devices has grown from 3% in July 2011 to 7% in July 2012. Information covering food and travel, and online trading are the most popular subjects among tablet users. As for the operating systems used in tablets, iOS controls 80% of that market share.

Future Trends Concluded from Data

The statistics presented by comScore suggest that smartphones and tablets are going to drive usage further through WiFi access.

A huge growth is expected in the games, health, news and retail categories, with Kedar pointing out that social media is a central touch point for all categories.

Going by predictions based on past trends, entertainment will dominate the content growth across both mobile devices and PC’s, and categories like travel, news and career services are expected to continue showing decent growth.

There’s a projected increase in cash-on-delivery payments, particularly in the retail category. With India’s internet population expected to get even younger in the coming years, there’s likely to be a boost in online advertising targeting the youth.

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HDFC Bank launches Android Mobile Banking App

HDFC Bank has recently launched its Mobile Banking App for android based smartphones. Promising ‘banking on the move’, the app can be used by customers with Android devices to make up to 30 banking transactions.

To download the app, android users can simply click on the Play Store icon and search for HDFC Bank. Alternatively, the app can be found on Google Play. To use the app, customers must be registered Net Banking users with a valid id and password.

HDFC Mobile Banking App Intro & Help Video

The app’s home screen is split into 6 tabs. The Account tab can be used to do everyday transactions including viewing account summaries, statements, making internal funds transfers, viewing FD balances and more.

Utility bills and payments for other services can be made via Bill Payment tab. Once service providers and their utilities are registered, paying an outstanding bill is as simple as selecting the service, entering an amount and tapping on Confirm to make a payment.

The Third Party Transfer tab opens up into a list of options related to making payments to third parties and registered beneficiaries. Customers can also use the app to generate summaries for their credit cards and make payments for the same through the Credit Card tab.

Initial response to HDFC Mobile Banking app has been great and it has already notched up close to 500k downloads since its launch earlier this month.

HDFC is not the first bank to launch its app for android devices. Other banks including ICICI Bank, SBI, Citibank, Standard Chartered and BOB have already given android users the facility to access banking from their devices.

HDFC’s Mobile Banking App almost mirrors the bank’s NetBanking portal in terms of utility and ease of access. The interface is clean and leaves little room for ambiguity. From stopping a cheque payment to initiating an online funds transfer, the app allows customers to make almost all the essential everyday banking transactions that could possibly be needed ‘on the go’.

The app ticks almost all the boxes when it comes to delivering convenience and utility from a purely banking perspective. However it doesn’t appear have an option to make prepaid mobile recharges directly.

In comparison, ICICI Bank’s android based app iMobile has a menu called the mShop which allows users to buy a prepaid mobile recharge. Additionally, customers can also buy movie tickets, train and bus tickets, shop for a variety of products and purchase DTH account recharges via mShop on iMobile app.

Other android banking apps including Bank of Baroda’s M-Connect, Union Bank’s U-Mobile and SBI’s State Bank Freedom also offer prepaid mobile recharges.

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The “Cheapest” Apple Experience!

What comes to mind when we talk about Apple?

The biggest company in the world, Steve Jobs, iPhone, iPod, iMac, iPad (all iProducts) but the word “Cheap” never comes to mind.

Apple doesn’t do cheap. It might go over the top with its prices. Sell extraordinary piece of hardware mingled with exceptional software which is not cheap at any level. Not to your pockets and not to hold or use or flaunt.

So, what is the cheapest Apple experience?

Actually, an iPod shuffle at the price point of Rs. 3000-4000 beats all other devices. But you and I both know I am not talking about that. iPod is definitely a great product but barring iPod touch no other device has iOS (which is based on Mac OS X) so can be counted with apprehensions.

Thus, now the crown to cheapest Apple experience goes to iPod touch. Let me raise the bar. Leave the small screen behind. Let iOS be seated alone in the corner to sulk while we meet the big daddy. The Mountain Lion driven breed that breathes out of Apple stores. What will be the best Apple experience in it? No doubt a MacBook Pro will be the best experience (preferably 15-incher) as it will give the portability and power in a single package. iMacs too are awesome to use and look at but will cost over 50K in any case.

So, what is the cheapest Apple-Mac experience….?

Few people know that originally the idea of Apple was to create computers that were affordable and for the masses. How did a company change its philosophy without implying it is beyond me but one last remain of that old philosophy still runs with the name Mac Mini.

Hearing the name must have cringed a few people I know. Even Apple calls it mini. What can be good about it?

Besides, if it’s cheap it means that something is missing. Well, let me tear it as much as I can.

First of all, yes, it is the cheapest Mac. At Rs. 33,900/- it is almost at par with good desktops. It’s a Mac in its full glory. I won’t bore you with the tech specs for two reasons. You can easily find it on Apple’s own site. Second, with Apple, specifications matter little. It is so because if Apple has made it, this automatically means that it is running good.

This is the advantage of having complete control over both hardware and software. In fact unless you are comparing an Apple to Apple technical specifications are not that useful. Because Mac OS X has to run on a particular set of hardware it is more optimized than Windows which has more compatibility.

So, first the caveat. It is just a CPU. No keyboards, mice, speakers or monitors to attach to it. This makes Mac mini’s cost more logical. But like assembled computers the advantage of just a CPU is that you can chose hardware of your own.

So, adding everything with normal cost of other products, it reaches somewhere around Rs. 45-50K. Suddenly, the Mac mini is costly, isn’t it? I would like to add here though that if we add the cost of the OS in Windows (which is pirated at low costs) the price of Windows based computer also increases steeply.

Now there is a catch here…

The reason why I wrote this and the idea even came to my mind. It is the fact that now; in many homes the cost of the Mac mini won’t reach 45-50K. Why? Because of the dawn of LCD and LED TVs. Mac Mini can connect with them with ease. An HDMI cable and you are set to use your TV as the monitor.

Thus any house having a TV (LCD or LED) does not need a monitor. Due to this the price of owning a Mac comes down to less than Rs 40K. In fact at almost Rs. 35K it is at a great price point to become a proud owner of Mac.

So, will you consider a Mac Mini this Diwali?