Google overtakes Apple as world's top brand: Survey

US search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world's top brand in terms of value, global market research agency Millward Brown said on Wednesday. 

Google's brand value shot up 40 per cent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report. 

"Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships," said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France. 

Google Glass is Internet-linked eyewear for which the firm has joined hands with Luxottica, a frame giant behind Ray-Ban and other high-end brands, to sell the new product in the United States. 

"All these activities send a very strong signal to consumers about the essence of Google," Tranzer said. 

Apple, which dominated the top position for three straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 per cent to $147.88 billion. 

The top 10 of the 100 slots were dominated by US firms. IBM was in third place at $107.54 billion, a fall of 4 per cent, followed by Microsoft at $90.19 billion — a 29 per cent rise. 

Fast food chain McDonald's ranked next at $85.71 billion, followed by Coca Cola ($80.68 billion), it said. 

China led in the insurance sector with Ping An valued at $12.4 billion and China Life ($12 billion).

French luxury goods manufacturer Louis Vuitton ranked 30th overall but was the top luxury brand with a value of more than $25 billion. 

Brand value is calculated on the basis of the firms' financial performance and their standing among consumers

What Flipkart, Snapdeal are doing to attract more customers

With price being the most potent weapon in their arsenal, online retailers looking to snare more customers are cajoling sellers to offer steep discounts and reimbursing those who do so.

The country's largest online marketplaces like Amazon.in, Flipkart and Snapdeal are adopting several models to ensure that merchants on their portal offer discounted prices.

Their unbridled aggression is drawing the ire of smaller peers as well as traditional retailers who are struggling to keep pace.

"P&G gives a margin of 13% for a pack of Pampers diapers. But Amazon was selling it at a discount of 28%," said the founder of an online site that sells babycare products among other categories.

"How is that fair? We can never match that kind of discounts," said the person on condition of anonymity. Amazon declined to comment. As the fight for top honours in India's Rs 12,000-crore online retail industry acquires a razor-sharp intensity, portals are doing all they can to attract and retain customers.

Officially, most portals maintain that they only offer a technology platform where merchants sell to customers, and that they have little role to play in pricing. However, several merchants that ET spoke to said they are constantly badgered to drop prices.

Discontent in ecommerce sector over predatory pricing

"The first level of price control happens when the seller uploads his catalogue," said Sayak Sahu, founder of IE Ventures that runs design-led gift products and gadgets firm Smiledrive. He sells products on Amazon, Snapdeal, Flipkart and eBay and is urged by each to compare prices for similar products and offer the lowest price.

"We get regular calls from category managers of all sites. They tell us to give earth-shattering discounts," said Sahu, who sells only online and expects sales of Rs 5 crore this fiscal.

When marketplaces want to run across-thesite or category-wide discounts, the cost of discounting is borne fully by the merchant, split between merchant and portal or paid for completely by the e-tailer . Often, the online retail company takes the entire hit for discounts.

"I had listed a Wi-Fi adapter for Rs 399 on Snapdeal which they sold for Rs 299, but I got my price," said Devesh Tanna, chief executive of Mumbai-based VeeDee Enterprises, an electronics seller who earns Rs 1.5 crore a year from marketplaces.

Snapdeal declined to comment for this article. Such strategies , termed as predatory pricing, are creating ripples of discontent across the country's fastgrowing ecommerce industry, expected to grow to $56 billion in the next decade. Saurabh Malik, business head at Indiatimes Shopping, said that while the portal co-funds some of the discounts, most are funded by sellers.

"We are against the philosophy of selling products at loss," said Malik. Amazon too reimburses merchants. In an email sent to sellers at the end of 2013 when the marketplace introduced Amazon Marketing Promotion Program (AMPP), the company said, "Amazon will pay for the promotional activities carried by you only for those orders wherein the customer has purchased those items under promotion within the validity of the promotion period at the specified discount price." Flipkart, on the other hand, makes adjustments in commissions.

"In some promotional campaigns, we either reduce or waive our commissions to allow sellers to offer better prices to customers," said Ankit Nagori, vice-president (marketplace) at Flipkart. "However, we do not reimburse sellers as this is not in the spirit of a true marketplace."

Sumant Chopra, a manager at electronics merchant Delhimall, said that if Flipkart regularly charges a commission of 10-15 %, it charges only 1-2 % for a few weeks when it has a scheme and gives that benefit to the customer. This additional discounting falls under the marketing expenses of online sites, whose large fund raises are primarily meant for such initiatives. Flipkart raised $360 million (. 2,140 crore) in 2013 and Snapdeal raised about $183 million (over Rs 1,000 crore) in 2013 and 2014.

Experts said these kinds of discounts are legal. "It is a marketing expense aimed at gaining customers," said Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail advisory Technopak. "However, if it falls under predatory pricing then there could be a problem." Traditional traders and even smaller online sites argue that rampant discounting followed by online marketplaces is indeed leading to predatory pricing.

"The minimum operative price has to be maintained, this is important," said Anwar Shirpurwala, executive director at MAIT, the trade association for manufacturing and hardware companies in India. "Predatory pricing does affect traditional traders."

While MRP is the maximum retail price at which a product is sold, the minimum operative price is set by brands beyond which a retailer cannot reduce the price of a product. These discounts result in products being sold below MOP.

Microsoft launches Surface 3, tablet that can ‘replace laptop’

Microsoft on Tuesday launched Surface Pro 3 at an event in New York. The company said that the device, which succeeds Surface Pro 2, combines the best of a tablet and laptop in a single gadget.

"So many people carry both a laptop and a tablet but really want just one device that serves all purposes," said Panos Panay, corporate vice president, Microsoft Surface. "Surface Pro 3 is the tablet that can replace your laptop — packing all the performance of a fully powered laptop into a thin, light and beautifully designed device."

Powered by an Intel Core i processor, Surface Pro 3 will be available in several configurations. The basic model, which has a Core i5 4300 processor running at 1.6GHz and 64GB internal storage, will cost $799. Despite packing in a Core i processor, the tablet runs cool. Microsoft claims it is the slimmest (9.1mm) device with a Core i processor. 

"The product we're announcing today has been three years in the making. To get this thin, light, and powerful was a huge challenge - partly because the powerful processors that power Surface Pro 3 need to be cooled... we invented a new fan technology that is 30% more efficient than previous solutions. The new, thinner fan cools a series of fins placed around it instead of forcing the exhaust air out through a channel. Not having to create space for this channel allows Surface Pro 3 to be thinner without sacrificing performance," said Panay. 

Surface Pro 3 will be available in the US and Canada from June 20. The availability will be extended to 26 additional countries by end of August but India is not one of them. 

Microsoft has not yet launched a Surface tablet in India. It is likely that Surface Pro 3 may not come to Indian market any time soon. Amrish Goyal, the head of Windows division at Microsoft India, had earlier told TOI that the company believed the Surface tablets were too expensive for Indian market. He revealed that instead of Surface tablets, in India Microsoft was focusing on less expensive tablets created by Microsoft's hardware partners like Lenovo and Dell. 

Surface Pro 3 has a 12-inch screen with a resolution of 2160 x 1440 pixels. It features an adjustable kickstand, has a casing made of magnesium and weighs around 800 grams. It has two cameras - 5MP each - in the front and rear. The device uses Windows 8.1 Pro. 

The tablet will also be available with a Core i3 or a Core i7 processor. The device has 4GB RAM in standard configuration but consumers will have the option to go for 8GB RAM. Similarly, if consumers want, they would be able to opt for the model with 512GB internal storage. The fully upgraded model of Surface Pro 3 will cost around $1,949. 

Like earlier Surface tablets, the Surface Pro 3 will also be compatible with a few accessories. "New Surface accessories like the improved Surface Pro Type Cover will take Surface Pro 3 from tablet to laptop in a snap. The new premium Surface Pen with pressure sensitivity enables a more natural writing experience, while a full-size USB 3.0 port, microSD card reader and Mini DisplayPort allow for quick file transfers and easy connections to a range of peripherals," said Microsoft. The accessories will cost extra.

Google launches online education tool, Classroom

Google has added a new tool to its Apps for Education suite, called Classroom. This product will help "teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease," the company said in a blog post. 

Classroom will integrate apps like Docs, Drive and Gmail so that teachers are able to create and collect assignments paperlessly. It will also allow teachers to track which students have not completed their tasks and provide real-time feedback to them.

Google says that Classroom will be an ad-free product, just like other Apps for Education tools. 

Teachers interested in trying out this new product can request for an invite on the official Classroom website and depending on the number of requests it receives, Google will let a limited number of teachers try it out for a month. The wider rollout of this online solution will commence in September.

HP to invest over $1billion in open-source cloud computing

Hewlett-Packard Co plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next two years to develop and offer cloud-computing products and services. 

The company said it will make its OpenStack-based public cloud services available in 20 data centers over the next 18 months. 

OpenStack, a cloud computing project that HP co-founded, provides a free and open-source cloud computing platform for public and private cloud services. 

"Customer challenges today extend beyond cloud. They include how to manage, control and scale applications in a hybrid environment that spans multiple technology approaches," Martin Fink, executive vice president and chief technology officer, HP, said in a statement. 

HP last week inked a deal with Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group to make servers aimed at companies that provide cloud computing services. 

Cloud services have become increasingly popular among both cash-strapped tech startups and larger companies, which rely on computers owned and operated by the likes of Amazon and Google, instead of buying the equipment themselves. 

Amazon.com and Google recently slashed prices of most of their cloud computing services as other companies join the fray. 

Cisco Systems laid out plans in March to offer cloud computing services, pledging to spend $1 billion over the next two years, while Microsoft said it will increase its cloud storage offering for business users 40-fold.

You can finally print Office documents from your iPad

     

     Microsoft’s Office suite has been a big hit on the iPad so far but it was also missing a crucial feature when it was first released last month: The ability to print out your documents from your tablet. Don’t fret, however, because Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it’s issuing its first update on Office for iPad that will enable printing onWord, Excel and PowerPoint. Other features included in the update are SmartGuides, a PowerPoint feature designed to “help you align pictures, shapes, and textboxes as you move them around on a slide,” and AutoFit, a new Excel feature that “lets you adjust the width of multiple rows or the height of multiple columns at the same time. With just a few taps, you’ll be sure that your spreadsheet looks better and that no content is hidden.”

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Mobile phones bringing ‘reading revolution’ in poor countries

A new report has revealed that the spread of mobile technologies that have made books more accessible than ever before and thus bringing a “reading revolution.”

According to UNESCO, 62 percent of those surveyed said they enjoy reading more after they started reading on mobile devices, and one-third said they use their phones to read to their children (an additional third said they would do so if more child-friendly books were available), the Verge reported. 

Lead author Mark West said that the study has found that mobile devices can help people develop, sustain and enhance their literacy skills, which is important because literacy opens the door to life-changing opportunities and benefits.

According to the study, 60 percent of respondents cited a desire for more diverse reading options as the primary hurdle to reading on mobile devices, while only 18 percent cited cost.

The UN estimates that around 6 billion people have access to mobile phones today and broadband mobile connections have seen tremendous growth in developing countries.