Heena Sharma Blog

  E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc's online store was grappling with widespread outages on Sunday night, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector, the second broad disruption to services since late June. Its online store showed error messages on several regional domains. Reuters could not access product listing on its domains including, the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Singapore. "We're sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issue," an Amazon spokesperson said. As of 0400 GMT, some of the domains were back up. Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the extent of the recovery in services. More than 38,000 user reports indicated issues with Amazon's online store site, while nearly 500 users reported problems with the Amazon Web Services, according to Downdetector. Read More

  Tecno Spark 7 is a budget-friendly smartphone packed with features that will launch in India on Friday. It will be available on Amazon. Tecno Mobile is a global mobile brand from TRANSSION Holdings, a phone manufacturing company in China. The company has been trying to ramp up its portfolio in India. The company last September launched Tecno Spark 6, which was the previous version of Tecno Spark 7 . Tecno has shared some promotional images and features of the phone on Amazon and its social media account on Twitter. Let’s take a look at what Tecno Spark 7 has on offer: Techno Spark 7 specifications Techno Spark 7 will have a 6.56-inch LCD IPS display with a pixel density of 273 ppi. The phone will have a waterdrop-styled notched display which will accommodate the front camera. The smartphone will come with a triple-camera setup at the back. It is likely to have a 13MP primary camera along with a 5 MP camera. It will be equipped with an 8 MP camera in the front along with...

  Samsung Electronics was relegated to the runner-up spot in the market for connected TV devices, which includes smart TVs, streamers and gaming consoles, in the fourth quarter of 2020, a report said on Wednesday. Despite increase in sales, Samsung gave up its top spot to Amazon which sold 13.2 million units of connected TV devices in the last three months of 2020, up 45 per cent from a quarter earlier, for a 12.1 per cent market share. Samsung, the world's largest TV maker, shipped 11.9 million units of connected TV devices in the October-December period, up 2 per cent from a quarter earlier, to account for a 10.9 per cent market share, according to industry researcher Strategy Analytics. "Amazon has had great success with its Fire TV Stick 4K, which became the world's best-selling digital media streamer device in 2020," Strategy Analytics said. Sony came in third with a market share of 8.2 per cent after its shipments soared 116 per cent quarter-on-quarter ...

Accelerating its efforts to increase access to high-quality entertainment for every Indian, Amazon on Wednesday introduced Prime Video Mobile Edition - a mobile-only plan at an introductory price of Rs 89. Prime Video Mobile Edition is a single-user mobile-only plan, providing SD quality streaming to customers which is created especially for a mobile-first country like India. Prime Video is collaborating with Bharti Airtel ("Airtel"), India's premier communications solutions provider, for the first roll-out of Prime Video Mobile Edition. "Given high mobile broadband penetration in the country, the mobile phone has become one of the most widely used streaming devices. With the launch of Prime Video Mobile Edition we look forward to entertaining every Indian with our Exclusive and Original content," Jay Marine, Vice President, Amazon Prime Video Worldwide, said in a statement. Read More  

  For months, complaints from tech companies against Apple’s and Google’s power have grown louder. Spotify, the music streaming app, criticised Apple for the rules it imposed in the App Store . A founder of the software company Basecamp attacked Apple’s “highway robbery rates” on apps. And last month, Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple and Google, claiming they violated antitrust rules. Now these app makers are uniting in an unusual show of opposition against Apple and Google and the power they have over their app stores. On Thursday, the smaller companies said they had formed the Coalition for App Fairness, a nonprofit group that plans to push for changes in the app stores and “protect the app economy”. The 13 initial members include Spotify, Basecamp, Epic and Match Group, which has apps like Tinder and Hinge. “They’ve collectively decided, ‘We’re not alone in this, and maybe what we should do is advocate on behalf of everybody,’” said Sarah Maxwell, a...

  US technology firm Amazon on Thursday announced a new version of artificial intelligence based Echo speakers in the price range of Rs 4,499 to Rs 9,999 a unit. The company at a global virtual event claimed to have reduced voice response of Alexa devices by hundreds of milliseconds using new electronic chips. "Our team really worked very hard to shave off 100s of milliseconds from Alexa response time. They invented a new AZ1 neural edge processor. It is a new silicon module that has been purpose built to run machine learning algorithms on the edge," Amazon Devices head for India Parag Gupta said. "We also built new neural speech recognition models that run on Az1. Together they make speech responses faster on Echo Dot," he said. The company started pre-booking Echo Dot priced at Rs 4,499, Echo DoT with clock for Rs 5,499 and Echo with 9,999 which will be shipped to customers later this year. Read More

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will launch an online pharmacy in India that will serve the city of Bengaluru, the latest move by the e-commerce giant to widen its reach in a key growth market. The service, " Amazon Pharmacy ", will offer both over-the-counter and prescription-based drugs, basic health devices and traditional Indian herbal medicines, the company said in a statement, without giving a timeline for the launch. The move comes amid increasing competition in India with rivals Walmart-owned Flipkart, billionaire Mukesh Ambani's upstart online grocery service JioMart and a range of other smaller players. Read More

Amazon has announced that its customers in India can now access Prime Video through a dedicated app available on the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 devices. Using the new Amazon Prime Video for Windows app, customers are now able to stream Prime Video content online or download Prime Video content for offline viewing on their device. This feature only works through the app on the Windows 10 operating system and includes desktop PCs, laptops, and tablets. The online streaming experience will be the same as the current experience on the Prime Video website. Customers can find the new Amazon Prime Video for PC app through the Microsoft Store on their Windows 10 device. Read More

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has started testing WhatsApp to connect customers to grocery stores, days after Facebook decided to invest $5.7 billion in digital assets controlled by the company. JioMart , an e-commerce venture of Reliance Retail, "has already started interacting with customers on WhatsApp for grocery orders" in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Kalyan, Credit Suisse said in a report. "The customer initiates the interaction on WhatsApp, checks out the grocery order on JioMart webpage, gets connected with a retail store on WhatsApp and then customer picks up the order from Kirana and pays in cash," it said, adding the model is likely on delivery and completion of the transaction on one app. Read More

Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday said it temporarily would not require sellers in its marketplace to repay loans it had made to them, as merchants confront the prospect of declining sales during the coronavirus pandemic . The world's largest online retailer notified sellers that its programme known as Amazon Lending would pause repayments beginning Thursday until April 30. Interest would not accrue during that period, it said. The programme has offered sums between $1,000 (846.5 pounds) and $750,000 to merchants looking for capital to acquire inventory, expand their product lines and advertise on Amazon. "Loan repayments will restart on May 1, 2020 ... You will have the same number of remaining payments once repayment resumes," Amazon said in a seller message obtained by Reuters. More than 20,000 merchants have gotten loans from Amazon, the company said in 2017. By the end of 2019, Amazon stood to receive $863 million from sellers to whom it provided financing thr...

Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it would hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers in the United States to tackle a surge in online orders, as consumers shop heavily fearing the spread of the coronavirus outbreak . Amazon said it would invest over $350 million to raise the pays for these employees in the US and Canada by $2 an hour, 2 pounds in the UK and about 2 euros in the European Union. It currently pays $15 an hour for workers in its US fulfillment centers. Read More

After launching several smartphones last year, Chinese smartphone brand Realme is continuing to bring more smartphones to the Indian market. After the Realme 5i, the company has brought the Realme C3, aimed at those who love to binge-watch movies and web series. The Realme C3 comes with some notable software and hardware upgrades over the Realme C2, including MediaTek's Helio G70 Processor chipset and a 5,000-mAh battery. In the first impression, we felt the smartphone was worthy of some praise but we couldn't just do that at its face value, so we used the phone for a few days and here is what we found: Design and display The phone's textured back panel is a deviation from the usual gradient design we see in most smartphones these days. Apart from that, the phone is lightweight, despite a 5, 000mAh battery. The power and volume buttons are on the right and left sides, respectively. But they are very sleek, hence a bit difficult to locate. The phone has a tra...

Sony likes a good mess. It wants you to abandon the idea that 5.1-channel surround sound can be delivered without getting tangled in wires (unless you spend a fortune on it). On the contrary, affordable TVs can be made to sound better with cheap single-unit soundbars. The bargain starts at as low as Rs 1,000. Add some credibility to it and you get the Mi Soundbar 8 for Rs 4,999 (Mi Store), the Samsung HW-N300 for Rs 5,899 (Flipkart) and the JBL Bar 2.0 for Rs 6,999 (Amazon). These time-tested 2.1-channel soundbars can do with the minimum space designated in front of a TV and can light up a small room with loud music and clear vocals. But the output usually maxes out at around 150W and the virtual surround sound is not absolute. The stubborn Japanese techies at Sony are unconvinced. The next league of soundbars comes with an additional subwoofer. And we must now scramble to find space for a boxy unit that usually weighs above 5 kg. The price-friendly Boat has the Aavante Bar 1...

German audio giant Sennheiser today announced the launch of Sennheiser PXC 550-II , the successor of its PXC 550 Wireless headphones in India. Priced at Rs 29,990, the new PXC 550-II Wireless is geared towards frequent travelers with its adaptive noise cancellation to suppress the ambient noise. The headphone will be available in India starting from February 12, 2020. The PXC 550-II has adaptive noise cancellation with its Anti-Wind ANC setting. The PXC 550-II Wireless comes with Bluetooth 5.0 compatibility and AAC codec support for superior wireless listening, while a new Voice Assistant button provides one-touch access to voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. The PXC 550-II Wireless also features a triple microphone array that makes it easy to stay connected. The Bluetooth headphone has a touch pad on the right earcup to adjust volume, play, pause or skip tracks, or to accept calls. Read More

Sony customers can’t seem to do without a good bass on any budget. And Japanese audio engineers say they have done their door-to-door research to come up with a new soundbar, tailor-made for India (read Bollywood). It also sets a new low in price for Sony as they enter a flooded sub-Rs 15,000 market. I spent some time fiddling with it before it hits the market on February 7. Here's my first impression of it for those eager to place their orders. For the rest of you, a detailed review is coming soon. The HT-S20R is a three-piece ensemble, which consists of a 2kg soundbar (760 x 52 x86), a 6.9kg subwoofer (192 x 387 x 342) and two rear speakers of about half a kg each. The soundbar has a neat metallic finish. It's a three-channel —or three-speaker — central piece, which is slightly wider than a 32-inch TV. Even if you place it right in front of the TV, it should not interrupt your view. The subwoofer, though, will require a strategic placement, preferably at a lesser...

Shortly after being named Amazon.com Inc.’s global logistics chief in 2013, Dave Clark held a conference call with his new reports. During the meet-and-greet, according to a person on the call, Clark described his early-career habit of lurking in the shadows of Amazon warehouses and scoping out slackers he could fire, which earned him the nickname The Sniper. Clark speaks in a monotone and is hard to read, but the message was clear enough: The new boss wanted his underlings to know that he will let little stand in the way of ensuring that customers get their orders on time. The Sniper demonstrated his determination yet again on Sunday, when—at the height of the holiday shopping rush—he essentially fired FedEx Corp. Clark’s team had noticed that FedEx’s delivery performance was slipping and banned third-party merchants from using the logistics giant’s ground network for the rest of the season. Clark has not forgotten the shambolic holiday season of 2013. Just months after he...

Google plans to launch a checking account service next year in a collaboration with Citigroup and a credit union in Silicon Valley , the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. In a project code named Cache, Google is working on a system that will host checking accounts clearly bearing the brands of the financial institutions, which will handle security and regulatory compliance issues, according to the Journal report. The report quoted a Google executive as saying the company's approach "is going to be to partner deeply with banks and the financial system" in what might be seen as a longer but safer route. The move would come as internet titans become increasingly involved in online financial transactions and e-commerce. Apple and Google both offer digital wallets that can be used on smartphones to pay for purchases online or in real-world shops. Apple also recently released a credit card. Amazon has been reported to be in talks with banks about cr...

Dispelling the fear that a slowing economy may affect consumer behaviour, e-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon India have said they witnessed record transactions on their platforms on the first day of their annual festive sale, which started early on Sunday. While home-grown Flipkart, which is now owned by American retail major Walmart, said it registered two times more sales on Day One of its flagship sale event Big Billion Days (BBD) over last year, rival Amazon claimed it witnessed the biggest opening day sale ever with a huge surge in participation in smaller towns. According to Amit Agarwal, senior vice-president and country head, Amazon India, the company also saw the single-largest day of Prime sign-ups, with 66 per cent of Prime members shopping in 24 hours coming from tier II and tier III towns. The company added that 91 per cent of new customers were from smaller cities. “ Whether it is the Diwali festival season or any other shopping event, the primary objecti...

Amazon , Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies that could spearhead a global AI arms race, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons. Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to killer robots , whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future. The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years, with critics warning they would jeopardize international security and herald a third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and the atomic bomb. "Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they're currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?" said Frank Slijper, lea...

Tata Sky Binge is an app-based platform that allows you to stream digital content from a diverse mix of over-the-top (OTT) platforms through a single platform and a single subscription fee of Rs 249 a month. The app is accessible through a special Tata Sky edition of Amazon FireTV stick which allows you to watch content of your choice on a supported big television screen. The special-edition FireTV stick comes pre-loaded with the Tata Sky Binge app, which includes content from various OTT platforms — Hotstar, Sun NXT, Eros Now and Hungama Play. Surprisingly, Amazon’s own Prime Video is not part of the package and requires a separate subscription for streaming of content. However, under its launch offer, Tata Sky is providing a free three-month subscription to Amazon Prime services, which includes Prime Videos, Prime Music and other Prime services. To activate the Binge app, existing Tata Sky users need to open the Binge app and use consumer identity number or subscription ID ...