Smartphone shipments see spike
For the first time, the smartphone market in India crossed the 30 million unit shipments milestone in the third quarter of this year, the International Data Corp (IDC) reported on Tuesday.
According to IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments clocked 32.3 million units in Q3 2016 with 17.5 percentage growth over the previous quarter, maintaining its traction with 11 per cent Year-on-Year growth.
“This seasonal spike in third quarter can be attributed to the channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October,” said Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) IDC India.
lenovo Group, which constitutes almost a fourth of total online smartphone shipments, continues to lead online channel followed by Xiaomi.
New Search for life on Mars
A newly discovered depression may breathe new life into the pursuit to find life on Mars. A strangely shaped depression — likely formed by a volcano beneath a glacier — could be a warm, chemical-rich environment suited for microbial life, according to a study from the University of Texas at Austin. “We were drawn to this site because it looked like it could host some of the key ingredients for habitability — water, heat and nutrients,” lead author Joseph levy, a research associate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, a research unit of the Jackson School of Geosciences, said.
The depression is located inside a crater perched on the rim of the Hellas basin and is surrounded by ancient glacial deposits. It first came to light in 2009 when levy noticed crack-like features on pictures of depressions taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter looked similar to ice cauldrons formations found in Iceland and Greenland, which were made by volcanos erupting under an ice sheet. levy and others also discovered another depression in the Galaxias Fossae region of Mars that had a similar appearance.
Apple mulls Wearable Glasses
Apple Inc is considering expanding into wearable glass headsets and has talked about the project with potential suppliers, Bloomberg reported. The wearable headset would show images, along with other information and may use augmented reality.
Chief Executive Tim Cook, who has been struggling with a slowdown in iPhone sales in recent quarters, said earlier this year that the company would continue to invest a lot into augmented reality. Apple, the world’s largest technology company, has ordered a small number of near-eye displays for testing but has not obtained enough for production on a larger scale. Apple declined to comment.
The move would make Apple the latest tech company to venture into wearable glasses. Alphabet Inc. discontinued its own wearable glass headset, Google Glass, and closed the social media account linked to the device earlier this year.
2016 hottest year on record: UN
2016 will in all likelihood be the hottest year on record and a new high for the third year in a row, according to the UN. It means 16 of the 17 hottest years on record will be in this century. The scorching temperatures around the world, and the extreme weather they drive, mean the impacts of climate change on people are coming sooner and with more ferocity than expected, according to scientists.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report, published on Monday at the global climate summit in Morocco, found the global temperature in 2016 is running 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels. This is perilously close to the 1.5°C target included as an aim of the Paris climate agreement last December. The El Niño weather phenomenon helped push temperatures even higher in early 2016, but the global warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities remains the strongest factor.
“Another year, another record,”
said WMO secretary-general, Petteri Taalas. “The extra heat from the powerful El Niño event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue. Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. ‘Once in a generation’ heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular,” he said.