Technology

New Delhi: If messaging someone and then waiting for their response to arrive when they see it seems too old school for you, there’s a new real-time conversation app in town – Honk. Squarely targeting the hyper-connected, Gen Z of the internet, for whom dial-up modems and 56Kbps broadband are myths, the Honk app is designed for friends to chat with each other in real time. As a result, there will be no back log of conversations left in chat windows, and no messaging session can happen until both participants are online and active at the same time. Furthermore, messages in chat windows are shown live as they are typed, including typos and all other goof-ups that you typically cover up before sending a message to someone, and taken the real-time messaging stance to the hilt, there is no send button either.

Ericsson, the Stockholm headquartered multinational networking and telecommunications company has sued Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd over a patent dispute in the district court of the Eastern District of Texas, United States. According to Ericsson, "the company (Samsung Electronics) violated Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) terms and conditions."

Many common technological standards, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, are protected by patents held by specific companies. These are used by other companies under Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory terms (FRAND). It allows manufacturers to use these common technologies owned by certain companies by obtaining licenses. According to Ericsson's statement, it seems that Samsung has violated the terms of conditions probably.

Though the Swedish giant has filed a suit against Samsung its financial effect will be felt more by Ericsson itself. Shares of Ericsson fell as much as 7% when trading started in Stockholm on Friday. Ericsson also said that this lawsuit can cost them about Rs 1,300 crores per quarter from 2021. Since the company relies heavily on its commissions from the patents it holds, so it is obvious if this case continues that is going to take a hit.

WhatsApp Pay, the payments platform by the popular messaging app, which was launched in India in November this, is yet to gain traction in the country. One month down the line, according to data by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the payments platform saw just 3.1 lakh unified payments interface (UPI) transactions worth Rs 13.87 crore. In comparison, competitor Google Pay recorded 960 million transactions, while PhonePe saw 868 million transactions during the same period.

NPCI allowed WhatsApp to go live with its UPI platform under the multi-bank model on November 5 in a graded manner, starting with a maximum registered user base of 20 million. Although WhatsApp has 400 million users in the country, the slow start to its UPI service can be attributed to the graded roll-out of the service.

To address risks and protect the UPI ecosystem, NPCI had issued a 30 percent volume cap on UPI transactions in November for third party app providers until January 2021 for players such as PhonePe and Google Pay. With UPI transactions reaching 2.21 billion a month, the move intends to balance consumer experience with the growth outlook of the UPI ecosystem.

LG has announced that it is offloading a part of its business to third-party vendors to cut costs. The South Korean company is restructuring its mobile phone business, which includes outsourcing of the low to mid-range smartphones to manufacturing vendors. This comes as a measure that the company is keen on taking to reduce operating loss and fight off Chinese brands that are popular in several markets.

According to an international news agency, LG is planning to sign contracts with the original design manufacturers (ODMs) to produce its low-range and budget smartphones. This will include the designing and manufacturing of certain ranges of LG smartphones by contracted parties. The smartphones manufactured by these ODMs will continue to bear the LG logo, as a part of the outsourcing contract. The company is also shelving several projects that involved in-house manufacturing of its entry-level phones.

New Delhi: PUBG Mobile India generated an understandable amount of hype, the moment its parent company, PUBG Corp, stated that it will be launching the game as a version that's tailored for the Indian audience and compliant with all government guidelines. Since then, numerous speculations about the launch of PUBG Mobile India have been persistent, and on and off, have claimed that the launch of the game is imminent. Things have now come to a point where concrete, official information on the matter is scarce on the ground, barring reports that are all largely speculative. Now, from earlier today, two standalone reports have claimed the polar opposite — while one says that the game may launch in early December, the other alleges that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which handles all things technology, is yet to give any clearance to PUBG Corp to re-launch the game across application stores in India.