Toshiba launches low-cost LCD TVs, gears up for production in India

Toshiba India has announced it will start production of LCD TVs in India by the end of the year, assuring customers of better priced televisions, apart from the socio-economic implications of the move. Toshiba is also opening a new R&D centre in Gurgaon, which will look at developing India-centric products.

Speaking about the plans of local production, Wu Tengguo, Director of Digital Products at Toshiba India, said: "We intend to start making LCD TVs in India soon, which are currently imported from our factories in Indonesia."

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Toshiba India recently merged its computer and television LOBs as the new Digital Products stream, helping streamline resources, and give customers access to a wider network of retail and service centres.

In the meanwhile, Toshiba has already started waging a price war, introducing two extremely low priced flat panel televisions – a 19-inch TV at Rs. 10,000, and a 32-inch TV at Rs. 20,990, quite a bit lower than similar offerings from its competitors in India – like LG, Samsung, Sony, and Onida, as well as smaller market shareholders - like Moser Baer, Haier, Hitachi, Sharp, Vu, and Videocon.

Toshiba’s aim is to gain traction in the Indian market with its LCD panels, where nearly 60% of the market is still occupied by CRT TVs. It hopes to sell nearly 300,000 LCD televisions this year, as opposed to 30,000 last year.

American blogger spots fake Apple Stores in China

Piracy is not such a surprising phenomenon in the tech world. But seems things have gone to whole new level as few people in China have set up fake Apple Stores! An American bloggerclaims she has seen as many as three fake Apple stores in Kunming city of China. To vindicate her claims, the blogger has even posted pictures of the stores, their staff and other relevant information on her blog - BirdAbroad. She also mentions her conversations with the staff, many of whom apparently believed they are working for the US-based firm.

The shops looked like a real Apple store at first glance. Even employees donned blue T-shirts and chunky ID lanyards. The interior had winding staircase and upstairs seating area, which looked like an Apple store. However, the blogger adds on closer inspection she found the store did not seem to have that required high standards. The stairs were poorly construed, while the walls weren't painted properly. And the most notable one was the shop front where it was written “Apple Store”. "Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit," wrote BirdAbroad.

The blogger did some more research, finding out that these Apple stores were not mentioned on Apple's list of official resellers, and that the only official Apple stores in China are in Beijing and Shanghai. It is however unclear whether the fake store sold Apple products, counterfeit products, binned units, or goods from a grey market source. The blog post mentioned the post on fake Apple Stores has been a huge hit on the Internet with some 500,000 visitors visiting the blog in last 48 hours.

Google to wind down Google Labs soon

Google has announced that it is going to wind down its Labs initiative as the company aims to its streamline product portfolio and concentrate on development efforts. The Google Labs website is a platform for all the early stage product prototypes and allows end users can try out without any guarantees of their future existence.

"While we've learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead," wrote Bill Coughran, senior vice president for Research and Systems Infrastructure, in a blog post.

It may be recalled that Google's co-founder Larry Page had talked about the company being amidst chopping down its wide palette of products and services, phasing out the ones which could not taste success such as Google Health and Google PowerMeter.

Google's move to retire Google Labs has already sparked debate whether the Internet company has done the right thing. Considering the fact that Google has always touted its policy of launching new products and letting the users lay their hands on them.

“In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments—in others we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market. We’ll update you on our progress via the Google Labs website,” further says Coughran.

It's notable that Google Labs was often touted as as the playground for its curious users. The Labs also served as incubator for some really popular Google products such as Google Maps, Google Readers and Google Groups.

There are more than 50 experimental products listed on Google Labs. After Google Labs goes offline, many will disappear, while some will be included into existing products. However, there's no word on which of the products will disappear and which ones will survive. Moreover, date for shutting down Google Labs has not been mentioned.

The company says the most of the Android apps on the Labs will be transferred to the Android Market. Google also makes it clear that its product-specific Labs sites, like Gmail Labs, Google Maps Labs and Search Experiments are not going to be affected.

“We don't have any plans to change in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or Maps Labs. We'll continue to experiment with new features in each of our products,” says Google on its blog.

Simmtronics introduces India's first Solar PC

Simmtronics Semiconductors has announced the launch of solar-powered desktop PCs in India, starting from Rs. 29,999. The solar-powered PC comes with a 74W solar panel, to be placed outside, and with batteries that apparently can store up to 3-4 days of charge, and run for ten hours in a row without sunlight.

In terms of specifications, the Simmtronics Solar PC is a low-end computer, a Linux-based meant for basic usage scenarios, like productivity, multimedia, and browsing. The specifications of the computer are similar to some of the Simm PC we saw in the recent past – 1.6GHz VIA C7 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, keyboard and mouse, and a 15.6-inch LED monitor. It comes with charge controller, SMF battery, and AC inverter.

Calling it the Simmtronics Solar PC, Simmtronics claim it is India’s first solar-powered operated computer, making it the first Indian company to launch such products nationwide. It will be available at authorized channel partner.