"Apple is outdated" LeEco CEO Jia Yueting says

Apple is "outdated" and losing momentum in China, billionaire entrepreneur Jia Yueting told CNBC in his first international television interview.

Jia is chief executive and chairman of Chinese conglomerate LeEco (formerly LeTV), which is best known for being the "Netflix of China," but has a product range that includes smartphones, televisions, mountain bikes and, most recently, electric vehicles.

Last week LeEco launched the self-driving, smart LeSEE supercar, designed to rival Tesla's Model X. In the latest evolution of the "LeEco ecosystem," Jia hopes to sell content, including movies, TV shows and music to LeSEE drivers.

Jia Yueting introduces the all-electric battery 'concept' car LeSEE on April 20, 2016 in Beijing, China.

Speaking at a meeting of the China Entrepreneur Club, an exclusive summit of business leaders, 43-year old Jia explained why foreign rivals did not worry him, particularly Apple, which is also expanding its ecosystem beyond consumer technology to driverless cars.

"We think the difference between us and Apple is very large. Apple is a mobile phone company focused on hardware and software," Jia said at the weekend event in Jinan. "LeShi [another name for LeEco] is focused on the internet first, and only then on software, and finally on hardware."

Apple's product design was also obsolete, he added.

"Apple only has individual apps. This was the right choice during the first generation of mobile net, when CPUs [central processing units] and the mobile network speeds were not fast enough," Jia said. "However now we're moving into the next era of mobile internet, these problems no longer exist. Moreover, having separate apps just means great obstacles in the user experience. We hope to break down these obstacles."

Sales in China, Apple's second-biggest market, have also deteriorated, Jia noted.

"One of the most important reasons [for slowing sales] is that Apple's innovation has become extremely slow," he said. "For example, a month ago Apple launched the iPhone SE. From an industry insider's perspective, this is a product with a very low level of technology...We think this is something they just shouldn't have done."

Apple's SE phone could increase the company's installed customer base for other services over the long term, said Angelo Zino senior industry analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. But there's a possibility that the lower-priced iPhone SE could pressure Apple's margins, if its effort to attract customers in emerging markets means fewer sales of high-end products, Abhey Lamba, senior technology analyst at Mizuho Securities, told CNBC's "Power Lunch" Monday.

"When we look at Apple they clearly need the next ... driver," Lamba said. "The Watch hasn't cut it. And they're looking at content on the services side, on the iTunes side. We'll see how that works out. But definitely they need something to drive the next leg of growth." 

As an industry leader, Apple should be developing more cutting-edge products, Jia said. The iPhone was still a leader five years ago after being launched in 2008 but now the concept has "fallen behind," he said. Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

"We believe the next generation of mobile internet will be more open, more ecosystem oriented instead of being a closed loop...Ironically, Apple's over-dominance, lack of internet-thinking and the closed off nature of its systems, all hindered innovation in the internet mobile industry," Jia said.

The Cupertino giant is expected to report a fall in smartphone sales when it announces first-quarter earnings on Tuesday.

"At this point we think Apple has now turned into this great valuation play, whereas if we do see some momentum on the iPhone 7 side, I think, all of a sudden, you start baking in some sort of growth driver for the company," Zino told "Power Lunch." 

It noted "some signs of economic softness" in the Greater China region, particularly Hong Kong, when announcing fourth-quarter results in late January. But chief executive Tim Cook said the company remained "very bullish on China" given the low penetration of high-speed mobile data usage and the growing middle class.

Jia, who started as a tech support worker before building his own IT and mobile company into a fortune estimated to be around $4.8 billion, is not shy when it comes to taking on industry leaders.

At the LeSee's launch, he told Reuters that while Tesla was a "great company," he was not "just building a car."

"We consider the car a smart mobile device on four wheels, essentially no different to a cellphone or tablet," he said. "We hope to surpass Tesla and lead the industry leapfrogging to a new age."

The LeSEE will be on display at the Beijing Auto Show this week.

Google Desktop OS | Feature and Utility

Google

Scores in depth

Stop us if you've heard this one before: ultra-cheap, ultra-portable laptops running Linux instead of Windows and using flash storage instead of hard disks. The similarities between Google's Chromebooks and the first wave of netbooks are obvious, but there are important differences too.

Processors and batteries are better, delivering decent performance and all-day battery life. We're now more connected, with ubiquitous Wi-Fi and good mobile broadband available in most urban and suburban areas. Also, cloud computing apps can be as good or even better than traditional desktop software. Can Chrome deliver what netbooks promised, and should you consider going Chrome OS in your business?

What is Chrome OS?

Imagine an operating system that only ran the Chrome web browser. That's Chrome OS. There's a desktop that you can look at but you can't stick files on, a status bar where you can pin your favourite apps, see the clock and check the strength of your Wi-Fi connection, and there's a browser. And that's it.

The selling point here is simplicity. By focusing on one thing - web apps - and doing it to the exclusion of all else, Chrome OS can avoid the complexity and bloat of traditional operating systems. It should run well on inexpensive hardware, it should be easy to deploy and to manage, and it should be free from the malware and exploits that plague more complex systems. And in most cases it delivers on those promises - provided, that is, that the software you need works as a web app and that you have reliable internet access.

Chrome was originally intended as an online-only operating system, but it soon became clear that this was a problem - especially in places such as rural Britain, where mobile broadband isn't always available and Wi-Fi hotspots are few and far between. Recent versions of the OS have embraced offline access to an extent - for example, Google Docs enables you to work on documents offline and sync once you get back to broadband, Gmail provides most of its features offline and Google Sheets, Slides and Drawings can work offline too. However, third-party apps generally expect a network connection.

Another issue you might encounter is that Chrome assumes any connection is a good one - so it'll cheerfully download OS updates in the background even if you're on a very patchy mobile broadband connection, which can slow things down considerably. For example, we're typing this on a poor quality Wi-Fi connection as updates download, and there's noticeable lag between our key presses and the letters appearing on the screen.

How to increase mobile battery life/These tips to extend your handset's battery life:

These tips to extend your handset's battery life:

Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung and other global brands have come up with smartphones equipped with powerful mobile operating systems such as Google’s Android, Nokia’s Symbian, Apple’s iOS, etc, that allows users to play games, listen to mp3s, snap pictures, have access to the Net and even stream videos.

Given their diverse range of capabilities and multi-functionality running on a mobile (as in on-the-go) platform, it’s no wonder that battery life has always been a concern for developers, manufacturers and the users themselves. On average, most smartphone batteries last between one and two days before being completely depleted, and in need of a recharge.

While we wait for the hardware development to catch up, the alternative will be to conserve battery life. As it is with our energy levels, battery life can be effectively utilized and managed, leaving nothing to go to waste. Without a battery charger or a spare battery with you everywhere you go, you’ll have to make due with minimizing the consumption of battery juice.

Here are 10 essential tips how you can conserve your smartphone’s battery.

1. Turn Off Vibrations

Vibrations are great for notifying you about incoming calls or messages when you’re in the theatre, meetings or other places where it’s necessary to keep the phone silent. In places where it doesn’t matter, it will be better for you to use your ringtone as notification if you want to keep your smartphones on longer.

Vibrations actually use up more power than ringtones. The sounds produced by ringtones are just very tiny vibrations in your smartphone’s speaker. Compare that to the shaking of the entire phone via vibrating a smart weight, playing a ringtone definitely zaps less of your battery. The same applies for using vibration for tactile feedback. If you don’t think it’s necessary, then disable vibrations or at the very least, lessen the magnitude of the vibrations.

2. Dim Your Screen

This one tip affects battery life drastically. It’s obvious that dimming your screen will reduce your smartphone’s power consumption since we all have to activate the screen whenever we use our phones. If our screen is brightly lit up every couple of minutes when we check our emails and such, it eventually will zap battery juice. Auto-brightness setting enable the smartphone to adjust the brightness to its optimal level for reading while conserving battery life.

On the other hand though, you may consider tuning the level permanently to the dimmest level that you can still read under without straining your eyes. Doing so may do wonders to your battery life in the long run.

3. Shorten Screen Timeout

In the same manner, if you wish to minimize the power consumption of your smartphone of the screen display, you ought to consider shortening the screen timeout. This decides how long the screen will remain lit after you finish interacting with it.

Some of us do not have the habit of ‘locking’ the phone after we we are done with it; we just let it go lights out by itself. Keeping the timeout duration short will ensure that the phone doesn’t waste power when you’re not using it.

4. Switching Off When Inactive

Although it is true that turning on your phone consumes more power than unlocking your phone, switching it off for a couple of hours can save more battery than leaving it on sleep or inactive mode. If you know you’re not going to touch your phone for an extended period of time, such as when you’re attending a meeting or sleeping, you can actually cut down a significant amount of energy consumption if you simply switch it off.

You might be wondering why you should even bother about battery level when you’ve a charger with you at home while you sleep. Well, the thing is thatrepeated charging for certain kind of batteries eats up the battery volume. For such batteries, the best way is to conserve as much as you can so that your battery retains its original capacity as much as possible.

5. Charge Your Battery Correctly

Speaking of phone charging, there are generally two kinds of rechargeable batteries commonly used for smartphones: Lithium-ion (Li-Ion), and Nickel-based batteries: namely Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd).

The battery capacity in NiCd batteries are reduced every time you recharge them. Nonetheless, NiCd batteries have longer life cycles i.e. they can be recharged more often than NiMH batteries before stop working. Nickel-based batteries should be charged (to the full amount) when they’re more or less out of power, and not when there’s still a good amount of energy left.

Li-Ion batteries have the longest life cycle among the three types of batteries but they also need to be charged more frequently (even when the battery is not fully used up) to maintain its original capacity. To keep your battery lasting longer, find out more about the type of battery that your smartphone uses and maintain the appropriate charging strategy for optimum usage.

6. Close Unnecessary Apps

Some of us open app after app and don’t bother to close them even after we no longer need to use them. This multi-tasking capability is a common feature of smartphones, but it is also a main reason why battery life gets drained away easily. The worst thing is that you’re losing battery juice when you are not even using them. Leaving them open will leave your battery at half-bar in no time.

As often as possible, kill your apps if you are not using them. There are some valuable apps out there that manage the multitasking ability of your smartphone to ensure it performs at its best to conserve battery life without jeopardizing usage. 

7. Disable GPS

Certain apps eat up more battery juice than others, particularly apps which utilize the GPS system to track your location. Your smartphone has a GPS unit that allows the sending and receiving of signals to and from satellites to determine your exact location, which is integral for some apps to work, for example, map-based apps like Google Maps or to check-in on Facebook.

When left running in the background, some of these apps may continue to send and receive signals. It takes a lot out of your battery to continuously do that, even if you aren’t aware of it. Hence, you should ensure that those particular apps are closed when you really don’t need them. A more extreme way is to disable location services when prompted by these apps. It may slow down the efficiency of these apps but you won’t be tracked on your location and some users deliberately do that for privacy reasons.

8. No Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G When Not in Use

Energy is consumed whenever your smartphone searches for signals, Wi-Fi, 3G or Bluetooth etc. When the reception is poor, the phone will continue scanning to attain a good connection. Repeated searches for these signals can easily make your battery level drop a notch.

What I’m saying is that you should turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when you don’t need to be connected. One convenient way to do it is to switch to ‘Airplane Mode’ or just switch your phone off when you know you can’t get any signal.

On the other hand, when you need good reception for your smartphone, place or position your phone in high connectivity zones. This will prevent your smartphones from constantly seeking for a connection and wasting your precious battery power switching from one signal to the other.

9. Minimize Notifications

With constant connectivity to the Internet, we tend to get notifications on our smartphones all the time, be it updates on the latest news, emails, high scores from games, add-ons for apps etc. But I’m sure that you would only want to be notified on the more essential stuffs like new text messages, or messages from Whatsapp.

Not only is it annoying to constantly receive irrelevant notifications that can actually wait, it is also a powersucker for each of these notifications. Every incoming notification will light up your screen, make a sound alert or vibrate.

Manage your settings well and disable unnecessary notifications to save a little battery power (and avoid being frustrated with these constant notifications).

10. Maintain Cool Temperature

Some of us might have observed that our battery runs out faster when our smartphones are warm. Put simply, don’t leave your smartphones under direct sunlight or in any place that is hot.

One of the more common occurrences would be leaving the smartphone in a car parked under the sun. The battery will function optimally in cooler environments, so do look out for, and try to avoid, scenarios where your phone is exposed to unnecessary and excessive heat.

How to use your Mobile Camera as your PC Webcam

Online chatting has been redefined with the video chat technology and more and more webcams are taking birth introducing new and vast technology, well but side by side webcams are somewhat expensive and can do only one task live streaming you to your friends and family members. Well if you wanna save your money and side by side want the same webcam experience, you can convert your mobile camera into PC webcam with small apps and tools easily.

Well we have three best options tat work universally on every platform, so we are going to use Smartcam as our first source, Mobiola web camera and the second source and the third one is specifically for android that’s iP webcam.

#1. Smartcam Package :

Smartcam Package simply provides an easy to install option for your all devices, Symbian, Android, iPhone and connect them as a webcam for your pc.

1. Download Smartcam Package and extract it in your pc, it’s a simple zip package so just right click and choose extract.
2. Now it contains a .exe file for your computer and applications for your android device, Symbian device and iPhone. You can use the one in package or you can download them online for newer versions.
3. Now after you have installed on both devices just fire it up using Bluetooth or USB connectivity and follow instructions and you will be live streaming your mobile camera video as PC webcam.

#2. Mobiola Web Camera :

Mobiola Web camera is available for iOS Devices, Blackberry, Symbian but its nor free and you have to pay little cost to get that app running.

1. Purchase Mobiola Web Camera software or download as trial version.
2. Now juts install app on your device after purchasing their device application.
3. That’s it now follow instructions and start chatting with your friends.

#3. iP Webcam for Android Devices :

iP Webcam for Android is simple application fro converting your Android Device into a wireless PC Webcam. This free application can be installed right into your pc and can used just by a simple iP (internet protocol address).

1. Download iP Webcam Android App.
2. Install the application on your phone and connect to the same Wi-Fi network connected to your PC.
3. Now just follow the instruction on your app and you will be able to connect your device camera with your PC and use it as a webcam.

So now these were the three easy options fro converting your device camera into a simple and free PC webcam. So no investment but still the same fun of video chatting is continued. Have fun and do comment.

Apple launches iPhone SE and iPad Pro, India launch in May

Apple has launched the iPhone SE, after much speculation. A mini iPhone 6s of sorts, the iPhone SE is powered by Apple's present generation A9 processor with M9 motion coprocessor. It also houses a 12-megapixel iSight camera with 4K video recording and Live Photos support. Apple has claimed better battery life, always-on Hey Siri and a new, improved LTE chip. The 4-inch iPhone SE will be available in two variants – 16GB and 64GB, priced at $399 (Rs. 26,500 approx.) and $499 (Rs. 33,200 approx.) respectively. Orders in the United States will begin on March 24, and the device is expected to launch in India by end-May.

Other announcements at the Apple Keynote included its work in the field of renewable energy, a demonstration of Liam (rather suspiciously named, we should say) the iPhone refurbishing robot, Health innovations, new Apple Watch bands and software updates, as expected. As expected, MacBooks have been left out this time, so we expect another event in the upcoming few months. Watch this space for more detail from the latest of Apple.