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'HCL Leaptops' Notebooks
While continuing its dominance in the Indian PC market, HCL Infosystems has
marked its entry into the mobile computing market with the launch of 'HCL
Leaptops' brand of notebooks. Starting Rs 27,490, the notebooks are powered
with the Intel and AMD platforms. HCL is also the first brand in India to launch
a notebook with the Windows Starter Edition.

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The company is
targeting various market segments through a range including multimedia,
ruggedised, ultra thin and light notebooks. HCL is expecting to leverage the
mass volume manufacturing of notebooks at its manufacturing plants in the
country to meet the specific requirements in the various segments as well as
bring more efficiency into the supply chain.

The new range of HCL
Notebooks are designed as per the requirements of the various target groups with
some personalized attributes. Some of the target groups include architects,
engineers, doctors, Info-kiosks (for Jewelers, Opticians, Banks), women, defense
etc. The ruggedised notebooks target defense personnel and workers in oil rig
conform to MIL - STD 801F and are designed for computing in extreme conditions
range between —15 degree C to 65 degree C, along with rain, snow, extreme
vibrations etc.

Siemens' New Wireless Module
In an effort to tap the burgeoning market potential in the
machine-to-machine communication space, Siemens Communications Group has
introduced a new EDGE wireless module, the AC75. The module, which will be
available in the market in September 2006, is Java-based and can be used in all
GSM wireless networks across the world.

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One of the key
applications of AC75, will be in automobiles. Some of the other potential
applications for the wireless module include pick-up stations, which might radio
unauthorized opening of a package box or weather stations in remote regions,
whose readings can be conveniently accessed via wireless modules. The AC75
wireless module offers a wide selection of interfaces, enabling it to be
integrated into all popular applications. All wireless modules from Siemens
Communications are manufactured in conformity with the EU directives aimed at
restricting the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic
devices (RoHS).

Rajasthan's State-wide Wireless Broadband
Rajasthan will host the first statewide deployment of wireless broadband
infrastructure in the country with Motorola as supplier for the wireless
broadband equipment. The delivery of the MOTOwi4 Canopy(tm) wireless broadband
equipment for building this wireless network has already begun.

The Motorola MOTOwi4
Canopy network will become the wireless backbone or grid system, with an aim to
eventually connect all the 10,000 panchayats in the state. The deployment will
provide high-speed connectivity to several rural locations where Internet
penetration is almost non-existent. With the network in place and the
availability of Internet reach in all the areas within the state, the citizens
and the panchayats will be able to share information with others throughout the
region as well as across the world. Village panchayats will have access to
video, voice and data and the network will allow them to communicate and
administrate seamlessly throughout the state.

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Nokia's New Smartphone with WLAN
Catching on the fast moving business mobility wave in the country, Nokia has
enhanced its business mobility offerings with the launch of its Nokia 9300i
smartphone with WLAN capability. The new offering is an upgraded version of
Nokia 9300 smartphone and provides a range of business solutions including
mobile email, device management, security features and business collaboration,
targeted at enhancing work productivity for mobile professionals. With the WLAN
functionality the phone has an edge over email solutions such as BlackBerry and
Visto.

The Nokia 9300i
smartphone comes with symbian operating system version 7.0S and weighs 172
grams. It also has the conference call capability allowing up to 6 participants.
The Tri-Band Operation supports EGSM 900, GSM 1800, and GSM 1900 networks in
Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, North America, and South America.


News
Items from 3GSM

Operators Vow to Fight Mobile Spam

The GSM Association (GSMA) has brought together 15 of the world's
leading mobile phone operators to sign a code of practice committing them to
work together to minimize spam sent via text and picture messages.
Bharti, Cingular Wireless, Hutchison 3 Group, Hutchison
Telecommunications International, mobinil, O2, Orange, SFR, Telefonica, Telenor,
TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Turkcell, VimpelCom, and Vodafone have adopted the code
of practice, which is designed to protect the secure and trusted environment
enjoyed by mobile services. Together, these operators have more than 500 mn
customers in more than 50 countries across all regions of the world.
Overseen by the GSMA, the code commits the operators to work together to
investigate cases of mobile spam transmitted across mobile networks and take
action where ever appropriate. Through the code, the operators plan to introduce
anti-spam conditions into all new contracts with third party suppliers, enabling
them to suspend or terminate the mobile contracts of spammers.

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Microsoft's Messaging Solutions
At a conference hosted at the 3GSM World Congress 2006, Microsoft along with
operators and device-makers announced a wide range of services and Windows
Mobile-based devices for business users to deploy mobile messaging solutions.
Microsoft plans to leverage the integration between Direct Push technology in
Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2
(SP2). This according to Microsoft will allow businesses to mobilize their
employees on a unified infrastructure without buying additional and costly
e-mail servers. This technology will now be available for Microsoft Windows
Small Business Server and will also be offered as a hosted service by a number
of service providers.

Vodafone And Microsoft Collaborate
Vodafone launches new Windows Mobile Direct Push email solution for business
customers. Vodafone and Microsoft have announced the European launch of Windows
Mobile Email from Vodafone. The solution is based on Microsoft Windows Mobile
5.0 and incorporates the messaging and security feature pack (MSFP), which
includes Direct Push Technology and enhanced security features.

From March, Vodafone
will deploy a range of Windows Mobile 5.0-powered devices with Direct Push
Technology to corporate and small and medium sized business (SMB) customers in
France, Germany and the UK. The service will also be available to corporate and
SMB customers in other countries during 2006.

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Mcafee Launches Security Solutions
McAfee, a leading dedicated security technology company, has announced it
has developed a mobile security platform, McAfee Mobile Security, which has been
architected, designed and implemented specifically for the mobile ecosystem
including operators, manufacturers, enterprises, and consumers. McAfee Mobile
Security provides the technology to deploy embedded and after-market mobile
security solutions that will encompass anti-virus, firewall, content filtering,
anti-spam and anti-spyware capabilities. McAfee's flagship product is McAfee
VirusScan Mobile.

Shipra Arora

shipraa@cybermedia.co.in

Smart
moves: SAP transforms Nokia Handsets into Scanners

Five years from now, we
won't be talking about RFID as a category, many believe. It is going to
be pervasive across all applications and you wouldn't have SCM solutions
without RFID data for example. But right now, its research and pilot time
with many interesting projects is being readied for rollouts. A case in
point is SAP's collaboration with Nokia on a project that is now
complete.

The underlying
philosophy of the program was smart items. Business logic today, runs on
servers. In the future, SAP anticipates, business logic will also run on
intelligent devices and the mobile phone is one such device. Nokia devices
were therefore fitted with a tiny SAP application with RFID capabilities
to perform certain business logic.

This smart phone will
now be useful across many enterprises and might even come down to
individual consumers, probably in a year's time, the company feels. One
application that it pursued was in the pharmaceutical vertical, where the
issue was of authenticating a product. So how do I pick up a product and
say that this is not a fake? The phone scans the RFID tag on the product,
reads the information, communicates back to an SAP system-may be by
sending a simple SMS-SAP then validates all the information and sends
back another SMS with the full history of the product. “That's a very
simple application people in hospitals can take advantage of,” says
Krish Mantripragada, director, Global Solution Strategy RFID, SCM
Solutions Management with SAP Labs.

The other class of
applications the company is looking at is field service mechanics.

This was just one of
the many projects with Nokia, a strategic partner for SAP since many
years. There hasn't been a mass rollout of these applications just as
yet, but there are companies who are evaluating the technology.

Also in the research
and early pilot stage are projects around active tags. The passive tags,
available now, have limited information and is static-it tells you what
is the product, where it has been, where it is now and the time-and
that's mostly about it. SAP says its active tags can also measure things
like temperature and pressure. So if you have processed food or an
expensive chemical that needs to be handled in tight environmental
conditions-a processed food might need to be refrigerated and at a
particular temperature throughout the supply chain-how do you ensure
that? “You need a sensor that can periodically wake up, measure the
temperature and keep a log of it,” says Krish.

He cites a project with
British Petroleum in the UK. The petroleum industry typically has a lot of
hazardous materials, expensive chemicals, controlled areas where certain
people are not authorized to enter, certain products that are not supposed
to be stored with other materials because they are highly inflammable in
nature. Other active tag work is around promotion compliance and promotion
execution effectiveness. RFID, by collecting the data at the right point
of time, can now find out how effective promotions were. He says RFID
applications are going into multiple different areas than originally
thought of.

Even though retail is
the one that gets a lot of attention as far as RFID usage is concerned,
for SAP, the promising verticals seem to be pharmaceuticals, aerospace and
defense and to an extent, even public sector and the government to
automotive, third party logistics and industrial machinery.

The company started out
its RFID research program way back in 1998 and the first commercialization
happened in 2003. Its interest area is data management, all the way from
the edge layer where one captures the data, creates, validates, and
manages it across multiple locations and then ultimately integrates that
to business applications such as supply chain or logistics.

Goutam Das
goutamd@cybermedia.co.in