China-Made UC Browser is Bigger Than Ever, Reaches 400 Million Global Users

Beijing-based UCWeb, makers of the smash-hit UC Browser for phones, is announcing today that it now has more than 400 million global users. That huge figure is pretty insane for basically just a single app, albeit one that’s adapted across seven different mobile platforms. UCWeb says this cements its place as the biggest mobile browser in the world. The app accrued 100 million new users in just under a year. Here’s the official word on its Twitter account:

UCWeb Reaches 400 Million Global Users: UCWeb pushes partnership play to accelerate market expansion in… goo.gl/fb/1zt2B #UCWeb Inc.

— UC Browser (@UCBrowser) December 13, 2012

The startup software maker has calculated this UC Browser stat from tallying quarterly active users across all platforms for December 2012. The company highlights India as one country that’s particularly hot for its browser, with that nation being its second-largest user-base outside of China.

The new logo for UC Browser to help it go international.

As we noted back in October, UC Browser has outpaced Opera and its mobile browsers in India, and UCWeb today claims to have 25 percent market share in that country. Indeed, today’s announcement comes out of UCWeb’s Hyderabad office where the team is engaged in the AppFest 2012 event which started today.

The app dominates by an even larger margin – with 73 percent share, according to iResearch data – in China, beating out even the local web giant Tencent, which is spending a lot to market its own QQ Browser. (Full disclosure: that includes on our site).

Though UC Browser is available on all kinds of smartphone and feature phone platforms, Android represents a massive user-base for the company, with 100 million of its 400 million total on Google’s mobile OS.

UCWeb has always had global ambitions, and so it’s also aiming to IPO in the US next year. Plus, its browser got a new icon and logo recently – the swirly squirrel you see above – to replace the cutesy cartoon squirrel that it used for years (and which I never liked, as I always found it a bit derivative of the Firefox logo).

For contrast, UCWeb’s global nemesis, Norway-based Opera, says it has over 275 million users of its browsers across desktop, mobile, and smartTVs.

Find UC Browser for your phone on its homepage.

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Japanese Animation Studio Has Global Potential, Receives Silicon Valley Investment

Recently Silicon Valley-based Fenox Venture Capital announced its investment in Japan’s Dream Link Entertainment Inc., which it notes is the largest Flash animation company in that country.

I was initially a little curious as to why Fenox would be interested in investing in a Flash animation company, given the current trajectory of Flash as a technology. I’m told that the draw of DLE as a company is in the popular characters it has created, and in its style of animation and storytelling – which the firm believes has huge potential in the global market. DLE animations have previously won ‘Best Animation’ and ‘Best Director’ at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival. A Fenox representative further explains:

DLE has the choice of supporting any animation software, in order to reach the largest possible target audience. The real opportunity in DLE is their ownership of a stable of popular characters and the team of creative talents behind them, who can continue to create new characters.

I understand that DLE currently brings in over $10 million in annual revenue, although currently its audiences are primarily in Japan. Fenox aspires to help the studio break into the North American market, and DLE is working to convert game characters into animation characters for more sales possibilities.

The Fenox rep with whom I spoke even alluded to the possibility of theme parks centered around DLE characters, which echoes Rovio’s real-world merchandising and marketing tactics with Angry Birds.

If you’d like to check out some of the animation that has impressed Fenox Venture Capital so highly, I encourage you to browse DLE’s YouTube channel where you’ll find lots of fun videos. Or for starters you can check out the very humorous clip of Eagle Talon below, which includes subtitles.

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MobStac Partners with PubMatic – Gets Distribution in US Market

Mobile publishing platform, MobStac has partnered with media platform, PubMatic to offer its platform through PubMatic’s PubLink enterprise app marketplace.

Through this partnership, MobStac will not only help PubMatic publishers create optimized mobile websites and apps across devices seamlessly using our cloud platform, but also effectively monetize them through the same PubMatic solution publishers have been using.

MobStac raised funding from Accel Partners and Mumbai Angels early this year to go global and PubMatic partnership will give them the much needed distribution in US market.

The Bangalore based startup has also partnered with Google India for the LetsTalkMo initiative, an initiative to get Indian SMEs to go mobile.

» Recommended Read: All about Mobile Internet in India : Key Stats, Data

» Insights from MobStac team on Publishers and Mobile Internet Revolution.

At one of the NextBigWhat hackathon, MobStac cofounder Ravi shared his entrepreneurial journey – i.e. how a geek learnt the art of products and starting up.

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App Roundup: Burrp and Cleartrip launch Android app

There has been back to back good news for Android users in the country as compelling applications roll out one after the other, adding value to Google’s phone operating system.  burrp the “dine, wine and hangout” listing website and Cleartrip, the online travel agent have launched their respective Android apps.

Currently, the burrp app filters restaurants, cuisines, bars, cafe, gyms and spa and events across 12 cities including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon and 8 other cities.

The burrp app (link) is compatible with Android v2.2 and above can be used to view menus, pictures, reviews, upload and share pictures through Facebook, Twitter, SMS by other burrpers. The app also gives one-click access to one’s favorite listings and events.

I compared the features of burrp’s app with Zomato (link). Both apps let users discover restaurants, browse menus, pictures, check ratings and reviews of all restaurants in your city.  Both are also location aware  and recommends restaurants around your current location.

While searching for places in a particular area, the burrp app offers map, which is pinned with all those joints in that area, and Zomato gives GPS coordinates for 52,000 restaurants in India.

For the most parts, both apps offer similar features and undoubtedly help foodies to find places to eat, hangout and about upcoming events. As burrp also lists gym and spas and shopping places, it provides information in these categories too.

As of now, Zomato has more than a lakh downloads and it would be interesting to see how burrp will perform in coming months.

Feedback to the team : There has to be a way to clearly differentiate between restaurants that offer veg-only/non-veg menus?

Do give burrp’s app (link) a spin and let us know what you think in the comment section.

Cleartrip arrives on Android, no service charges on train booking through app

After launching an app for iPhone and Windows, online travel agency, Cleartrip has launched its Android app offering its entire suite of products. The new app (link) allows users to book train, flight tickets as well as hotels on the go.

Train tickets booked through the app will not be charged for the service, making the tickets cost same as booked through Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation.

To book trains ticket through Android app, users have to make sure to connect the IRCTC and Cleartrip accounts.

Cleartrip Android app features

- Reserve train tickets on the go

-Book flights (international and domestic)

- Make payment using credit and debit card including net banking.

- Hotel reservation over 113,000 hotels across the globe

- Access trips and bookings on Android enabled phones

- One touch flight booking

- Quickeys, the feature enables users to access hotel deals for same day check ins

Earlier Cleartrip had launched its mobile application for windows phone (link) and iPhone (link) respectively in May and August this year. Windows app enables users to search select and see previously booked  flights/trips on the go, while iPhone app offers expressway, payment options including other features.

Unlike the Android app, Windows and iPhone apps launched by the Concur backed company does not support train and hotel booking. In April, the online travel agent added cab services to its offering. The service lets Cleartrip consumers book cab along with flight tickets.

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Don’t Tase Her, Bro: US Police Taser Chinese Woman Thought to be an iPhone Reseller [VIDEO]

CNN has spotted a local TV news station in the US reporting on the unfortunate case of a Chinese woman in America being tasered by police in an altercation at an Apple Store. The woman, surnamed Li, was asked to leave the Apple shop premises after attempting to buy more than the allowed quota of two iPhone 5s per person, a move made to stop resellers who export the devices to grey-market vendors in China and some other nations.

But the situation escalated when Li did not leave the store, which her daughter says was down to a language barrier-based misunderstanding about what was being asked. When the woman then filmed other customers in the shop, whom she believed had bought more than two phones, the Nashua, New Hampshire, police were called, and a taser was pulled out as Li resisted arrest. Another shopper filmed the tasering – replete with agonizing screams – in the mall. She was carrying $16,000 in cash. Nashua police will review if excessive force was used.

Here’s the video on WCVB TV:

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Amazon Brings Kindle E-Bookstore and Apps to China, But Still No Sign of any Hardware

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has just launched its e-bookstore and Kindle smartphone apps into China’s crowded e-book market. It has been a long time coming – and there’s still even longer to wait for Chinese consumers who’d actually like to buy a fully-supported Kindle e-reader, as that device is not part of today’s launch.

As spotted by TheNextWeb, the Chinese “Kindle Store” – meaning its e-bookstore – is now online here; plus the Android version of the Kindle reading app is on this special homepage, along with the iPhone and iPad versions now in the Chinese iTunes App Store. All the apps are the global ones that everyone else uses, not some fenced-off made-for-China creations.

What’s next for Amazon’s Kindle in China? It’s high likely that the next launch will be the Amazon Android AppStore along with Amazon’s cloud services – both being prerequisites for the Kindle and Kindle Fire tablet.

There’s an array of free and paid-for e-books in this new Kindle Store, though for now they can only be read in the Amazon-made smartphone apps. Here’s an e-book product page:

Quite a few e-book fans in China have purchased imported Kindle e-readers, but they’re still not being supported by Amazon. In fact, a whole cottage industry has grown up around these Kindle owners and enthusiasts in the country, such as iKindle for news subscriptions, and Duokan for flashing custom firmware onto Kindles.

The Kindle Store enters a very crowded market in China, with everyone from the funky social network Douban to huge e-commerce stores offering e-books. One such online store, Dangdang (NYSE:DANG), even sells its own e-reader device. Others, such as Shanda Cloudary, have been in the biz for years already. So the Amazon and Kindle names are guaranteed success in China about as much as the Mayans are going to be proved correct later this month.

[Source: TheNextWeb]

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Google Maps back on iOS with turn by turn navigation, Street View and more

iOS6 users can now find their way better with the return of a better Google Maps.

After Apple’s attempt, and embarrassing failure, to replace Google Maps with their own default map, Google Maps is finally back on the iTunes Store. Released today, the new app features turn by turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more. At least one good thing has resulted from Google Maps getting booted from iOS6. As Gizmodo pointed out, users can now enjoy a better Google Maps application with all the added features.

iOS6 users can now download the app through the iTunes Store. However, some users have reported trouble in downloading the app. Personally, a search on my iPhone 5′s App Store did not reveal the application. I had to use the shared link to download via iTunes on the desktop before syncing over to my iPhone.

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Google Maps back on iOS with turn by turn navigation, Street View and more

iOS6 users can now find their way better with the return of a better Google Maps.

After Apple’s attempt, and embarrassing failure, to replace Google Maps with their own default map, Google Maps is finally back on the iTunes Store. Released today, the new app features turn by turn navigation, public transit directions, Street View and more. At least one good thing has resulted from Google Maps getting booted from iOS6. As Gizmodo pointed out, users can now enjoy a better Google Maps application with all the added features.

iOS6 users can now download the app through the iTunes Store. However, some users have reported trouble in downloading the app. Personally, a search on my iPhone 5′s App Store did not reveal the application. I had to use the shared link to download via iTunes on the desktop before syncing over to my iPhone.

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Aadhaar ties up with Visa, five banks launch Aadhar-linked Saral Money bank account

Five banks, including SBI, ICICI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, HDFC and Axis Bank have launched Saral Money bank account service, which brings banking for the unbanked and marginalised section of the society through a Visa payment gateway, using the UIDAI (Aadhaar) card as a proxy for the Know Your Customer (KYC) criterion. [Source]

Saral Money makes sure that everyone with an Aadhaar (Unique Identification Number issued by the Government) automatically has an instant account in a bank. The Aadhaar holder can also purchase a card for a nominal fee to operate the account. With Saral Money, the government and other institutions can send money to anyone using only an Aadhaar number, irrespective of whether they have a bank account or not.

The beneficiary can withdraw their money from any ATM, any micro ATM using biometric authentication provided by Aadhar, through a bank branch, or access their money through web and mobile phones. In addition, with Saral Money citizen will now also be able to make purchases at retail counters through point of sale terminals.

Largely, the move would facilitate instant account opening, simplified documentation along with accessibility and reach. Now citizen can open a Saral Money banking account by providing Aadhaar letter as the proof of identity and address at any of these five banks and the “business correspondent” outlets.

The unique identification project, one of the most ambitious technology projects by the Indian government was earlier recognized as a valid proof of address to operate accounts with brokerage firms, mutual funds, portfolio managers and capital market entities.

Prior to this Chandigarh administration recognized Aadhaar as a valid proof for various welfare schemes being run by departments, boards, corporations, public undertakings and agencies in July this year. Aadhaar cards can also be used to open bank accounts and avail gas connections.

The move would help government to equip bank accounts to marginalized citizens improve transparency in schemes like the central employment guarantee scheme and efficiency in driving the country’s electronic payment and financial inclusion policies. The service aims to target the 210 million 12 digit unique identification number holders and expand them to 600 million by 2015.

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Of GOSF and Big Bang Launch : Day 1 Revenue for PayTM Tickets : ~ INR 37 lakhs

GOSF was a success (?), if you believe Google. But, from what we noticed on social media, consumers weren’t so impressed with the quality of deals (but they definitely were checking out deals, i.e visiting sites).

PayTM which launched its bus ticketing serviceon 12/12/12 had a major blast – the company recorded 3012 ticket booking amounting to total revenue of Rs. 3676776.0 in the first day of the business.

PayTM GOSF Promo

Here is the (blockbuster) box office report from 12 Dec 2012, 12:13 am To 13 Dec 2012, 12:13 am, as shared by PayTM team:

-

Total number of booked tickets: 3012
Total users: 2048
Total Rupee value: Rs. 3676776.0
ARPU: Rs. 1795.30078125
Avg ticket value: Rs. 1220.7091633466136

Users
Net new registered user: 1928
Existing sso users: 1853
New sso users: 1791

Failure transactions: 141 (cancelled by user, 362 failure status from payment gateway)

Top Searched Source Cities: Hyderabad: 9436, Bangalore: 8456, Chennai: 4192, Pune: 1998, Delhi: 1834, Mumbai: 1588, Ahmedabad: 858, Vijayawada: 815, Visakhapatnam: 668, Goa: 490

Top Searched Destination Cities : Hyderabad: 5649 times, Bangalore: 5364, Chennai: 2892, Mumbai: 1410, Vijayawada: 1364, Pune: 1291, Visakhapatnam: 1210, Goa: 1173, Guntur: 777, Tirupathi: 659.

Top Searched Routes : Bangalore To Hyderabad => 1279 times, Hyderabad To Bangalore => 1143 times, Hyderabad To Visakhapatnam => 661 times, Hyderabad To Vijayawada => 611 times, Bangalore To Chennai => 524 times, Chennai To Bangalore => 504 times, Hyderabad To Chennai => 483 times, Bangalore To Vijayawada => 475 times, Hyderabad To Rajahmundry => 387 times, Hyderabad To Shirdi => 383 times

–

What worked for PayTM? 

Lack of competitive deals across the entire GOSF set. There were hardly few good deals as part of GOSF (except for Myntra, Homeshop18) and given that December month is where most of us travel to native places, 50% off on bus ticketing also helped people in making an impromptu decision about their travel plans.

Actually, some of NextBigWhat team members decided on their travel plans after they saw the discounted pricing – i.e. PayTM got new customers who had NO intent to use the service.

Actually, if you look at advertising dollars PayTM spent VS the RoI of a timely launch, there surely is a learning for bootstrappers out there.

Plus, given the data they were able to collect on Day 1 (i.e. most searched routes/average ticketing etc), it also gives the product team a good perspective on markets to go after.

Chance pe Dance?

 Disclosure: PayTM is a sponsor at NBW.

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DailyDose: Facebook Changes Privacy Settings, Andreessen denies Internet bubble

Facebook Changes Privacy Settings

Facebook is making changes to its privacy settings. First, it is improving some privacy protections. The company is adding a new top-level control, called Privacy Shortcuts, that will allow people to quickly change who can see their “stuff” (as Facebook calls it) and who can contact them through the Web site. The shortcut will also feature a one-button link to block someone on Facebook. [Source]

Google Chairman Says Android Winning Mobile War With Apple

Google’s Android is extending its lead over Apple Inc in the mobile-software market at a rate that compares with Microsoft Corp expansion in desktop software in the 1990s, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said.

Booming demand for Android-based smartphones is helping Google add share at the expense of other software providers, Schmidt said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. Android snared 72 percent of the market in the third quarter, while Apple had 14 percent, according to Gartner Inc. Customers are activating more than 1.3 million Android devices a day, Schmidt said. [Source]

Texas Instruments Forecasts Sales In Line With Estimates

Texas Instruments Inc. the largest maker of analog chips, gave an updated fourth-quarter sales forecast that was in line with analysts’ estimates as customers seek to keep inventory low amid lackluster demand.

Sales will be $2.89 billion to $3.01 billion, the Dallas- based company said yesterday in a statement. Analysts on average projected revenue of $2.95 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In October, Texas Instruments had said sales would be $2.83 billion to $3.07 billion. [Source]

McAfee arrives in U.S. from Guatemala

Computer software pioneer John McAfee, who is wanted for questioning in Belize over the murder of a fellow American, arrived in Miami on Wednesday evening after he was deported by Guatemala, according to fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight.

After landing, McAfee, 67, was escorted from the plane by airport security officers, passengers said. Shortly afterward, he tweeted, “I am in South Beach,” referring to the popular tourist area on Miami Beach.[Source]

Andreessen denies Internet bubble, advises Times to stop printing

Far from experiencing a bubble, Silicon Valley has been in the throes of a “technology depression,” Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said at the New York Times Dealbook conference on Wednesday.

While conventional wisdom holds that social-networking website Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) initial public offering pricked a bubble that was taking hold around privately held consumer Internet companies, Andreessen expressed skepticism.[Source]

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How Should a New Startup in Singapore Find Funding?

This question originally appeared on Quora, and the answer that follows was provided by Thomas Wong, a local Singaporean.

Thomas Wong, Local Singaporean

I drafted up a few quick diagrams to explain the funding scene in Singapore. It’s not complete, but might be helpful to some. There are three main sources to look into when starting out. Of course I am presuming you are not planning to fund it entirely on your own.

1. Friends and family
2. Private funding
3. Government funding

Friends & Family

I’ve seen mixed advice on this aspect, and I agree that you’d mostly only get one shot at this. But I’ve seen enough businesses that exist on support from supportive family and friends, a famous one would be Sir Richard Branson. It’s great to get started and get you off the ground, but you’d want to get familiar with raising funds from cold contacts/investors as soon as you can.

Private Funding

This is a pretty unmapped territory as there are a plethora of options. There are some networks like BANSEA, which pool together a mix of private investors and government linked ones as a collective of seed investors. There are also MNCs with funds dedicated to identify interesting startups to invest in, [like] Google Ventures, Gree Ventures, Intel capital, and even Singtel’s Innov8.

Recently, the entire Hackathon trend has been ported from the US to Singapore, where people who want to begin on their startup journey can participate in these thirty to ninety day events. They form a team, pick an idea, and patch together a product that they then pitch to investors at the end of the process on “demo day.”

There are private funds and investors, Innosight, DFJ, and some invest considerable amounts even at seed level. I personally know two companies who raised a million dollars from individual investors, without a technology or traction in place when they pitched. Basically, it’s a jungle out there, you’ll need to talk to people, do your own research, and keep your ears on the ground to identify which funds to approach.

A good way if you have the connections, though, is to identify these funds from a higher level on the value chain. If you have friends in finance, fund managers, fund of funds, wealth managers, they might be able to give you a quick take and even introductions to the people running these funds. Most of these guys work with or fund these angel investors, venture capital, or seed investors.

Government Funding

The Singapore government has been working hard to lift entrepreneurial activity here for a while, and they have put in place number of schemes to facilitate that, each focusing on various industries and stages in a company’s growth. I’ll cover three of the more popular ones for fresh startups.

Essentially there are three schemes I’ve come across that a fresh technology startup in Singapore would normally look into.

• There is the ACE program administered by SPRING Singapore: they match about $50,000 to $13,000 you raise on your own.
• There is iJams reloaded, administered by MDA. It has two phases to its funding scheme. MDA works with private or institutional incubators to administer this fund. In the first phase, MDA will match $50,000 to about $10,000 that the founders or the incubator puts up. If the milestones are hit and the startup is eligible for phase two, MDA will match $100,000 to $100,000 raised by the founders or the incubator.
• There is also a scheme under the NRF (National Research Foundation), TIS Technology Incubation Scheme. They offer a number of matching options which can go up to three million dollars, depending on the type of company and stage of growth.

There are some nuances for each scheme that a founder should be aware of, between schemes and between the bodies that administer these schemes.

Nuances

On top of where to get funds for your startup, each funding scheme has its own set of advantages and intricacies. These are some things to think about when deciding which funding scheme would work for you.

I’ve shared a quick mind map with a few more details of the funding landscape in Singapore. It’s not complete, but is a pretty good guide to founders fresh to the ecosystem. You can view it below.

More questions on Startup Advice and Strategy:

• What are the leading startup trends and ideas of 2012 and 2013?
• What are some good places to connect with entreprenuers in India when starting a startup?
• What are some great “must-watch” videos on Youtube for entrepreneurs?

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SaaS based billing platform ChargeBee secures $350k from international investors

ChargeBee, a SaaS and retail based subscription billing solution, which provides small and emerging businesses to automate the entire billing process to run subscription services, has raised $350,000 from undisclosed international angel investors.

The Chennai based company would utilize funds to unveil a slew of new features, invest in operations and to expand across verticals which includes SaaS, digital media and retail subscription commerce.

Demoed at UnPluggd 5th edition,ChargeBee gets most of its users from global market with major base in US and Singapore. The company offers some extra benefits to its merchants based abroad, which could not be done in India due to RBI’s regulation.

As of now, ChargeBee has acquired more than 100 private beta users, out of which 11 of them have gone live with its billing system. Speaking to NextBigWhat about company’s consumer distribution across geographies, Krish Subramanian, co-founder and CEO, ChargeBee said “All our customers have global focus. Most of our beta customers are from US, UK and Australia and only 3 clients from India are powered by us”.

ChargeBee delivers a seamless solution for subscription businesses globally, where they can store credit card and charge the card based on usage automatically month-on-month. The retry management feature of ChargeBee helps reduce churn due to soft errors in credit card like expiring cards, credit limit exceeded etc.

Launched in July this year, currently ChargeBee has teamsize of 10 employees and plans to focus on  scaling customer base in SaaS, digital media and retail commerce. “We will be launching more integrations and verticalized features addressing these verticals” added Subramanian .

 

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Google Zeitgeist: What was Asia Searching for in 2012?

Google Zeitgeist map

It’s that time of year again, when we see all sorts of media publishing a barrage of year-in-review pieces. Obviously some are better than others, and one of my favorites so far is Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) extensive presentation of hot topics from the past year. Its Zeitgeist 2012 page is a fun overview of what the world was searching for over in 2012, as is its video summary which is included below.

So what was big in Asia over the past year? Google points out that all things mobile proved to be very hot this year. Asia’s fascination with mobile, if it wasn’t apparent already, was hard to miss in 2012, as Apple’s iPad 3 was a trending search in China, but so were ‘Android games.’ The iPad Mini and iOS 6 were popular in Japan, as were searches about popular chat app Line, and how to use it. Samsung had a successful year in 2012, and in Vietnam the Samsung’s Galaxy was one of the most popular searches. Even in India, the perpetual vaporware Aakash tablet was a trending search.

As for the most discussed topics, it’s pretty fascinating to note that while PSY’s infectious Gangnam Style was the second most popular search worldwide (behind the late Whitney Houston), that certain Asian regions proved practically immune from this viral video, notably India, Japan, and Taiwan.

If you’d like to drill down to see more insights about your own country, do head over to Google’s Zeitgeist page and give it a try. It’s pretty fascinating.

Google isn’t alone in its efforts to summarize the past year for us. Twitter has an insightful overview of what the world was talking about in the past year, as well as a function that lets you view your own personal year of Tweeting via a Vizify page. In much the same way, Facebook has a clever personalized Year-in-Review page where you can see a summary of all your 2012 activity.

What will you remember most about 2012? Let us know in the comments.

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