Malaysia may get next-gen LTE networks in two years

Malaysia can expect commercially available LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network services to arrive at the end of 2013 or early-2014, said an analyst. “When we talk about a commercial LTE network in Malaysia, we’re looking at probably sometime end of 2013, or early 2014,” said Amresh Kacker of Analysys Mason.

“But the definition of [being commercially available] is not having a few base-stations supporting a few mobile dongles, but a full-fledged ecosystem with a lot of handsets and devices,” Kacker clarified.

LTE, simply put, is the next step in mobile network technology that emphasizes more on data transfer than voice, unlike 2G or even 3G technology. LTE technologies — which include TD-LTE (Time-division LTE) and FD-LTE (Frequency-division LTE) — are geared to deliver data speeds of 100 Mb/s, and an uplink of at least 50 Mb/s.

Kacker was speaking at a media retreat organised by Packet One Networks Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian Internet service provider that utilizes WiMAX technology. During the retreat, the company demonstrated its readiness to upgrade its ZTE-equipped base-stations from WiMAX to TD-LTE through applying software upgrade alone.

Analysys Mason based its projections of LTE arriving in Malaysia on several factors, including the success of its commercial trials in China and India, and how quickly the Malaysian government would allow operators to use the 2.6GHz spectrum for LTE.

“The main driver for the technologies are China and India; without these two countries deploying them significantly, Malaysia is unlikely to take the lead because it’s not a big enough market,” he said.

The progress of LTE trials in China and India have so far been positive, said Kacker, adding that LTE’s progress is unlikely to slip up because of the commercial push that China Mobile and Reliance India are putting into the new technology.

In China, large-scale trials are being carried out in Shanghai, Chongquing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen. In India, Reliance tested LTE technology at its Navi Mumbai Centre during December 2010 and claimed to have reached peak downlink rates of 80 Mb/s, with uplink rates of 20 Mb/s.

Big on mobile

Chart 1: Malaysia annual fixed and mobile market size (source: Analysys Mason)

The evolutionary move towards TD-LTE is key for the future success of Packet One, especially given Kacker’s dour outlook for WiMAX. “Personally I don’t see more opportunity for WiMAX-embedded devices because there’s not a very large ecosystem,” he said. “If our predictions are right in saying that TD-LTE is commercially available in two to three years, I can see no commercial rational in deploying new WiMAX 2 equipment.”

Packet One’s CEO Michael Lai said that it is moving fast to secure this space, and has submitted a detailed business plan to the MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) to use the the 2.6GHz spectrum for LTE.

“The foundation blocks are already in place; the MCMC is quite advanced in this matter, so it’s a matter of days and months, not years, before LTE is allowed to operate in Malaysia,” Kracker said.

The market for mobile broadband is one of the fastest growing segments in the country. In comparing Malaysia’s annual fixed and mobile market size in 2009 and 2010, Analysys Mason found that the mobile broadband dongle segment doubled year-on-year from RM700 million to RM1.4 billion, while the mobile Internet (handset) segment grew 24% y-o-y from RM1.5 billion to RM1.8 billion (see chart 1).

Chart 2: Malaysia broadband subscribers (source: Analysys Mason)

While the mobile voice segment still takeses 76% of the total market, its growth has stagnated. The total market size for 2009 was RM24.5 billion, and grew to RM26 billion in 2010.

“Without a doubt, growth is on the mobile wireless broadband space,” said Lai.

The share of mobile broadband subscribers in Malaysia has been steadily increasing over the past couple of years. In its study of the local broadband market, the analysts found that mobile broadband subscribers made up 33% of subscribers in 3Q09, but had increased to 50% in 4Q10 (see chart 2).

Link to full article

Read More

Doinky Doodles: A Story of Hand Sewn Perfection

Doinky Doodles stands out against the dark folds of Bali Lane with its bright colours and imaginative murals. Stepping into the store, you find plenty of handmade items carefully crafted and made from scratch by owner Weng Pixin (aka Xin).

Set up in May 2008, Doinky Doodles showcases Handmade Art that has been creatively made from an assortment of earth friendly recycled fabrics. The result is original, nifty and fun pieces of art that visitors will find hard to resist.

Xin’s aim of setting up Doinky Doodles is to let people connect easily with art by making it more affordable and handy to use, as opposed to the classic notion of only owning pieces that are sold in galleries.

Interior of Doinky Doodles

Pursuing her passion as a crafter

Owner of Doinky Doodles – Xin

Xin graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts in 2004 and it was during her final year project where she discovered her love for sewing dolls using second-hand clothing. She explains, “I love working with second hand material because they have interesting existing textures (folders, pleats,) and elements (zippers, pockets, buttons) for me to cut-&-rework into something new!”

Prior to Doinky Doodles, Xin and her sister sold their handmade art under the label Maki Squarepatch. After two years, the sisters decided to pursue their individual dreams and goals – marking the start of Xin’s solo journey.

The joys of running Doinky Doodles

Xin hopes that Doinky Doodles helps to spread a little magic by reminding a visitor or customer the value of patience, love, humor and passion through the wonders of Handmade – particularly in a fast paced environment such as Singapore.

She elaborates, “As a crafter, I love receiving custom-order requests because it is nice to be able to play a part in peoples’ gifting ideas. Kind of like being one of the elves in Santa’s workshop; receiving letters on what they (customers) would like and me play a part in creating it.”

A snapshot of Xin’s collection made back in 2008

Xin’s store draws a fair share of fans and visitors that range from a wide spectrum. Most of her visitors are women, but there are men, who are looking for gifts or are generally more open to the idea of wearing colors. Running the place gives her the chance to meet travelers who are passing by Singapore as part of their round-the-world journeys. Listening to their stories makes it all the more enjoyable for her.

On finding the right location

The store is located on the second level on 33 Bali Lane and carries a quiet, cheerful, and relaxed atmosphere. It is here that Xin draws, illustrates and sews her charming creations.

The young entrepreneur says that she has grown to love it being secluded and hidden from the crowded places. The quiet environment lets her work, while at the same time functioning as a shop.

The fact that Raffles Hospital is located diagonally across her shop provides a slight comfort too. “If I should have any crazy accident with the sewing machine, I could still try my mighty best to hop over there.”

Teaching others to make handmade items

Doinky Doodles conducts hand-sewing workshops by Xin at the shop. She hopes to encourage people to spend time creating something from scratch. “I have also liked Art as a tool to connect with people, so I hope even more that these sewing workshops will encourage people to sew something interesting for their friends and loved ones,” she said.

Advice to fellow crafters and entrepreneurs

A child wearing one of Doinky Doodles’ creations – the Slug tee

Xin emphasized the need to follow your gut instinct. Her own unique characteristics shine through her work. Individuality, Colors and Absurdity are elements that prevail in every piece of creation. All these make Doinky Doodles an attractive space for crafters and fans alike.

If you’re looking for interesting gifts or custom made items, check out Doinky Doodles’ website or blog for more information and the latest updates. If you’re in Singapore, you should just drop by the place at 33 Bali Lane, where you will no doubt find Xin stitching new whimsical creations.

Xin has created a beautiful world filled with imagination and love in the eclectic enclave of Kampong Glam.The Ultimate Start-Up Space offers you that chance to create your own world to share; winners of the competition gets a 1400sq ft space rent-free for one year, $20,000 start up capital and an Executive Education Program from INSEAD – total prizes worth more than $170,000. Follow articles related to the competition here.

Doinky Doodles
33 Bali Lane (2nd Floor)
Telephone: (65) 6292 2248
Email: xin@doinkydoodles.com

OPENED
Every Tuesdays to Saturdays, 1.00pm – 8.00pm.

Thanks:
1. All images in this article are courtesy of Xin.

Link to full article

Read More

What's Left to Clone In China

There's still some white spaces left for clones of Internet brands in China. Look at the Chinese LinkedIn, Wikipedia and GroupOn as examples.
Link to full article

Read More

Two More Days To RedDotRubyConf

Southeast Asia’s first ruby & rails conference RedDotRubyConf is happening in 2 days time.

Updated details about the speakers below:

---

Speakers

---

• Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), Founder of the Ruby Language ruby-lang.org
• Tom Preston-Werner, Cofounder of Github; Rubyist
• Dave Thomas, Author of “the pickaxe book” and an original Pragmatic Programmer
• Gregg Pollack, a Hollywood director trapped in the body of a software developer
• Ian McFarland, VP Technology & Principal at Pivotal Labs
• Mikel Lindsaar, Founder of rubyx and a Rails commit team member
• Sau Sheong, Director of Applied Research for HP Labs Singapore.
• Robert Berger, CTO at Runa, a company that provides a service that improves online conversation rates for e-commerce sites.
• Paul Gallagher, CEO of software development house Evendis based in Singapore.
• Andras Kristof, Senior Director of Engineering at Viki, a company that is subtitling the world of videos.
• Ryan Bigg, from RubyX.
• Tze Yang Ng
• Matthew Rudy Jacobs, from Thought-Sauce, a development house based in HK.
• Alex Nguyen, from Vinova, a Web Design and Development Company in Singapore.
• Alam Kasenally from PlayMoolah, a Singapore start-up hoping to teach children about money.

Have you got your tickets?

---

Event Details

---

When: April 22nd – 23rd 2011
Where: Singapore Management University, 60 Stamford Road, Level 2, School of Accountancy, Singapore 178900
Get your tickets now! Don’t miss this landmark event.
Link to full article

Read More

Silicon Dragon: What's Left To Clone In China

Just how many clone opportunities are left in China, now that the Chinese marketplace has copies of YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, eBay and yes, even Wikipedia (see my photo of founder Haidong Pan).

The latest cloning craze is localized versions of GroupOn. Consider that Lashou.com, a competitor to GroupOn in China, just raised the large sum of $110 million from venture investors.

Some white spaces do still exist for new categories, narrow niches or new local twists on the same ole thing. What’s surprising is how well some look-alikes have done in China despite getting a late start. What helps, of course, is that the big American Internet brands have crashed in China.

Take Ushi.cn as one example, China’s most popular business social networking brand.


Read the rest of the post here at Forbes.com:
http://blogs.forbes.com/rebeccafannin/2011/04/20/whats-left-to-clone-in-china/

Link to full article

Read More

Kids gotta learn about money, and more from Echelon 2011 Singapore Satellite

“[American parents] talk about sex, they talk about drugs more than they talk about money (management),” and “Instagram is destroying the memory (of photos),” were some of the interesting statements thrown out by the startups pitching at yesterday’s Echelon 2011 Singapore Satellite, the first of four. The event also saw a high-powered Brunei delegation dropping by to check out the startup scene in Singapore.

The Singapore Satellite saw 10 startups showing off their awesome products in hopes of making the cut as one of the final 10 companies presenting at Echelon 2011′s Launchpad in June.

Attendees were treated to a live demonstration on how calendars can be exciting and fluid on the tablet (by Not A Basement Studio) and how companies can benefit from tracking public opinion and using it to guide marketing campaigns (by Spatial Ideas).

Other interesting products were a curated fashion app by Stylelogue which is available on the App Store today, a deals marketing site (by Fezzl), couple blogging for a more romantic blogging experience (LoveByte), money management education for children (PlayMoolah), simplifying career discovery for job hunters (Identifii), a taxi sharing app (Taxizu), Facebook and Twitter page design services (by Fetch Plus Asia Pacific) and a stalker-friendly photo sharing application (by Twidl Inc.) that seeks to reduce noise from your social media platforms.

To spice things up, the attendees were given a chance to vote for their favorite startup pitch in the People’s Choice Award. Children’s financial education online platform PlayMoolah swept the polls with a clear win over the rest of the nine startups. They walked away with a six months on Microsoft’s cloud computing solution Azure and mentoring from some of the Redmond company’s product development and business minds.

So, what’s next? The e27 team is now packing their bags to head north to Malaysia for the second leg of the Satellite events.

Thinking of joining us there? The event details are as follows:

Echelon 2011 Malaysia Satellite

Date: 21 April 2011

Time: 12:45 – 5:45pm

Venue: Zouk Kuala Lumpur, 113 Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, 55000, Malaysia

Event hashtag: #mysat

Register here.

Link to full article

Read More

Twitter Appoints Japan’s Country Manager

On Japanese official blog, Twitter announced that they have had a country manager of Japan, first corporation manager outside of US.

The blog is usually written in Japanese, but this one was both in Japanese and in English.

A Welcome to Twitter Japan’s Country Manager

I couldn’t be happier to announce that James Kondo (@jameskondo) is our new and first country manager in Japan. In fact, he’s Twitter’s first international country manager.

Japan has been an important country for Twitter for several years. It is one of the first countries that really took to Twitter outside of the United States in creative and innovative ways. And, better yet, Twitter usage in Japan continues to quickly grow.

We like to think that Twitter has been important to Japan, too. Most recently, we’ve been humbled to have played a role in helping connect the country after the tsunami and earthquakes. On behalf of everyone at Twitter, I convey our deepest condolences to everyone in Japan, especially to victims and their families.

James is perfect for the job. For the Office of the Prime Minister, James has been a policy advisor and director of global communications strategy. He has also served as an international management consultant at McKinsey & Company and been a director at a leadership program at the University of Tokyo. Somehow he’s even had time to write and edit four books.

James will be building out a team in Japan. You can see current job openings here.

Congratulations. Twitter welcomes you, James.

Mostly they tell the same thing. The one which is not so clear for me is if Twitter Japan now exists as a corporation body.

Link to full article

Read More

Control Who Accesses Your Document With Seclore [Information Rights Management]

As companies get more social, it’s mandatory that you need control over access to sensitive documents. In the past, we have seen several companies data being disclosed without knowledge (like Twitter’s entire business plan/future plan etc).

Incubated at IIT Bombay, Seclore provides security products in the area of Information Rights Management (IRM), which enables companies to control all aspects of documents. Seclore InfoSource allows enterprises to define and implement “usage rules” for such data and the usage rules are applied to data even after it travels to the vendor location.

Seclore FileSecure allows for owners of documents and emails to control usage before and after the documents/emails have been circulated. This means that information shared with internal and external parties can be “remote controlled”.

Information can be controlled for

• WHO (people, groups) has access to it,
• WHAT (view, edit, print, forward) can each person do with the documents ,
• WHEN (dates, time spans) he/she can use information and
• WHERE (in the office, at home) can they use it.

A complete audit trail of the document flow and its usage is maintained centrally in line with the recommendations of ISO 27001, PCI or SOX. It is also possible to, at the end of the process to revoke the usage rights to the document so that the document can thereafter no longer be opened by the receiving party. Documents can also be programmed for self destruction based on time!

Seclore’s clients include ICICI, HDFC, Kotak, Reliance, L&T, Thyssenkrupp, Bajaj Allianz, Panasonic, HCC, Asian Paints, Titan, Fugro etc and they have already launched document management connectors that work with popular clients like Microsoft SharePoint , Newgen OmniDocs and IBM FileNet.

Also see: Digitally Secure Your Physical Documents with Kleeto

Link to full article

Read More

“Our Business Has Changed From What We Originally Thought It Will Be”–Onze

Onze is an interesting startup which figured out a niche in local/lbs space and just went ahead and cracked deals with retailers (they were PowerPlug finalists as well). Here is presenting an interview with Sudarshan/Rahul, CoFounders of Onze on the company’s journey so far.

Your life prior to starting Onze. What was the founding team up to? Did you know each other?

Me and Rahul were at Infosys before starting ONZE. I started as an engineer and moved on to technical sales. Rahul started as an engineer and moved to service delivery operations. During our tenure, we learnt software product engineering, operations, marketing and sales.

How did you come together to start up?

Both of us always wanted to start on our own. We used to work with each other at Infosys and enjoyed the relationship. When we decided to found a startup, we did not have a business idea ready. But, we were confident in each other and in our abilities to build a good business case.

We promised to each other that we will think big, build a respectable product company honestly with fairness to all stake holders.

What was the initial hypothesis around the product launch? How much of it has changed over the last few years?

We started building an in-car navigation system for India. We quickly moved onto a different business where we provide local search on SMS, and monetize by selling targeted contextual advertising on it. We have used this platform and have now launched services for retail business, that helps them in their marketing and customer service.

Today, we have two business lines:

1) selling our consumer engagement service for retail businesses. We operate this business in 5 cities and help hundreds of showrooms, hospitals, etc.

2) We host the Latlong service on SMS and Mobile internet to consumers in Bangalore. Lakhs of people use this to locate places in the city. We sell targeted advertisement and help retail brands reach out to consumers on this medium.

When we started our initial business plan, we had very little data and a lot of assumptions. When we learnt more about our market, about our abilities to execute, the business responded by evolving our value proposition, pricing, target audience , etc.

Thus, over the last 3 years, our business has changed from what we originally thought it will be

How much of money has the founding team put up (initially)? Are you angel funded?

We raised an angel funding of 1Cr when we started Latlong in 2008.

What’s your primary business model?

Our primary business model today is the subscription of our platform to retail businesses. Using this platform retailers can ask their consumers to find their nearest stores and thereby get leads. The advertising on our medium is promising, but needs to prove itself well.

How challenging was it to sell this concept to retailers?

The adoption of our offering requires the retailer to modify their marketing and sales process. So, selling requires us to pitch to the top decision maker at the retailer. This makes this difficult to sell. The other generic issue is that, scaling sales when one has to sell to numerous businesses is not easy. We are working on new models to overcome that.

Entrepreneurship Lessons – What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

1. Completely think through execution before starting off on a business. Don’t ignore sales in your execution plan.

2. Be careful when you choose your co-founders. It is not enough to have competency match, but look also for match in chemistry, life’s goals & attitude.

Read Paul Graham about this.

3. Most of the challenges are internal. Intellectual honesty will help see through that. Learn from other’s mistakes. Never ignore the role of advisors here.

On LBS

When you started up, there was quite a bit of noise about LBS (it still is), but nothing has changed at the ground level. Comments?

The noise in LBS was mainly among geeks

LBS in itself cannot be a consumer product. It is only an enabler and can contribute to other offerings like local search, tourist guide, social networking, shopping, personal security, etc. We learned this crucial lesson with our SMS based direction service. The service got picked up exponentially, thanks to word of mouth marketing. But the revenue was generated when we built SMS based Store Locater and Route guide for businesses.

Do share your future plans/updates

Business looks promising as well as challenging. We plan to strengthen our marketing, and expand sales of our consumer engagement platform. The market is huge and one has to meet the need. We are next planning to launch our location services on more channels – mobile web, social media and desktop internet.

–

[Apply for PowerPlug Contest For April Month/Deadline is April 20th]

Link to full article

Read More

Bloggers: Adsense Not Enough? Start Your Own eCommerce Bijness

As a blogger the one thing we can do best is, write. Unfortunately, unlike a journalist that is not enough for a blogger. One has to take care of publishing, marketing and generating revenue as well. Traditionally, bloggers have been dependent on Google Adsense for revenue and when you get pissed off, you try some affiliate program for few days and then come back to Adsense until your next drop in eCPM. What if you could have your own e-commerce store and generate additional revenue without any other hassle involved.

Bijness.in lets you do almost that. Bijness gives you a hosted e-commerce store at yourname.leloot.com. See example store here. The store comes with all the products, payments and shipping system. All you have to do is promote it. For every sales made you get a cut of anything between 1-20%.

The other major feature of this program is that you can integrate the webstore to your Facebook page also. See sample Facebook store.

One way to look at this startup is that this is a e-commerce portal called LeLoot.com that is running an affiliate program. Though given its features the concept is somewhere between an advertiser and affiliate. May be more of a reseller model. As a publisher if you can generate repeat customers from your subdomain then you end up getting more revenue, which isn’t the case in most affiliate programs.

Whatever said, this is an interesting pitch. And what’s even more commendable is that the startup has put in efforts to create a decent analytics system for the publishers which most affiliate or reseller programs fail to do.

From an e-commerce startup point of view the store has to do a lot of enhancements in UI and have to regularly live up to the expectations of the buyers. In a way the blogger is putting his credibility at stake. LeLoot has to build a strong brand for itself to be able to convince readers into buying.

The startup will also have to give more control to publisher in terms of UI customization and product lineup. One important feature of having the webstore on your own domain eg. store.pluggd.in would also be essential for bloggers to feel more comfortable. This is a premium service as of now.

What this startup is exploiting is the clear gap of a strong affiliate ad network in India. None of the networks provide dynamic ad feed based on blog’s content. And individual campaigns are just impossible for publishers to manage. The only popular ad network, DGM, has such bad payment terms (over 6 months approval time) and non-objectionable approval policies that a publisher ends up with more frustration than gain.

What do you think of this model. Would a popular ecommerce site be justified in doing this? Do try this alternate Bijness for your blog or FB page and lets know your views.

Link to full article

Read More

enchant.js: New HTML5/JavaScript Game Engine For Smartphones

Tokyo-based Ubiquitous Entertainment (UEI) announced [JP] “enchant.js” yesterday, an HTML5/JavaScript game engine for smartphones (and PCs). The engine is available in beta, it’s open source (dual license MIT or GPL on github), and entirely free to use.

UEI says their aim with the release of the engine is to motivate young people in particular to start programming games as well as to lower the hurdle for entry into their 9leap game creation contest (more info on that here).

The company not only provides the code, but also a range of graphics from previous game titles for free (a map editor and other elements are in the works).

The features of enchant.js include:

• 2D sprite library
• multi-layer background scrolling
• collision detection
• ActionScript-like event model
• etc.

enchant.js is the brainchild of Ryo Tanaka (who is just 19 years old).

The game engine supports Android 2.1 and up, plus iOS 3.0 and up.

Here are two screenshots from games that have been created with enchant.js:

Link to full article

Read More