MUMBAI: Cautioning public against a fraudulent bank account mobile app in its name, the Reserve Bank has said it has not developed any such application.

In a statement, the RBI said it has come to its notice that an app "is doing rounds on WhatsApp purportedly to facilitate checking of balance in customers' bank accounts".

The application has an RBI logo with the title 'All Bank Balance Enquiry No' and has listed several banks with either a mobile number or call centre number, it further said.

"The Reserve Bank wishes to clarify that it has not developed any such application. Members of public are, therefore, advised to use the application, if at all, at their own risk," the release added.

BENGALURU: Indian IT is gearing for a slugfest with global peers like IBM and HP as mega billion-dollar IT contracts come up for renewal. London-based IT research firm Ovum estimates that contracts worth $13 billion will be up for renewal this fiscal year. 

This includes UK's publicly-funded healthcare system National Health Service's (NHS) $3.7 billion IT outsourcing contract that involves application maintenance and development (ADM) and systems integration (SI). US-based IT major CSC is the current primary vendor for the contract. 

Detroit-based General Motors, whose brands include Chevrolet and Cadillac, had awarded a $2-billion IT outsourcing contact in 2011 for ADM, SI and infrastructure management that will come up for renewal in July this year. 

Hansa Iyengar, IT analyst in Ovum, said that many large deals coming up for renewal have a sizeable infrastructure component to them and most of these involve very large, complex legacy systems that need to be modernized. "We have anecdotal evidence of Western incumbents walking out of the deals as they perceive them to be too risky for the given contract values and these are some of the deals that the Indian vendors are picking up," she said. 

Last year Cognizant bagged a $2.7 billion deal from HealthNet and Wipro won a $1.2 billion IT outsourcing deal from Canadian logistics and utilities provider Atco. 

Such mega contracts are rarely awarded to a single entity any more; clients prefer to take a multi-supplier approach. Ian Brown, senior analyst-IT services in Ovum, said one consistent factor in all of the high-end deals is that they are primarily IT infrastructure outsourcing deals - with the exception of Wipro/Atco, they are either single or twin infrastructure towers (data centre and end-user). "But the infrastructure towers, especially data centre, is very complex with a lot of expensive legacy assets, much of which needs to be written down and which partly accounts for the very high contract values. HCL and Wipro already play in this high-end infrastructure market, while TCS, Infosys, and Cognizant are all investing in their infrastructure practices," he said.

Amazon.com is said to have acquired data-migration startup Amiato last year, giving the online retailer the brains behind a technology that makes it easier to pour data into Amazon's cloud services.

Amazon bought Amiato for the skills of its employees, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the deal. Terms weren't disclosed.

The Palo Alto-based startup specialized in taking data from a variety of modern databases and migrating it into Amazon's online archiving service named Redshift. The company had received $2 million in funding from Data Collective, Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and others. Amazon doesn't acquire many companies for its Amazon Web Services cloud division, instead investing heavily in internal research and development. Acquisition targets typically are small companies that fill a particular niche, such as 2lemetry, an Internet-of-Things firm Amazon purchased last month, and Israeli semiconductor startup Annapurna Labs, which the online retailer agreed to buy in January.

One use of Amiato's technology is to take data kept in modern databases, such as MongoDB, and load it into Amazon's Redshift. Amiato employees have subsequently gone to work in Amazon's database and Redshift product groups, according to posts on LinkedIn.

Spokeswomen for Seattle-based Amazon didn't respond to requests for comment on the deal.
Amazon introduced its first set of Web-services products almost 10 years ago. The business division in which Web-services sales are logged brought in $1.67 billion in sales in the company's most recent quarter. Amazon will start breaking out its Web-services unit as its own line item later this month when it reports its next quarterly earnings.

KOLKATA: As smartphone sales continue their journey north surging by 51% every three months, the mobile commerce (m-comm) market may grow by 55% from its present size of $2 billion to $19 billion by 2019, a study said.

According to a study released by market research firm, Zinnov, "right from user research to product anytime and anywhere, smartphones are an emerging point of purchase and to address the demand from upcountry markets and changing consumer shopping pattern, e-commerce companies are increasing their focus on mobile commerce".

The survey found over 91% of the consumers had researched a product or service on their phone while online transactions on the smartphone platform rose between 30-50% in the upcountry areas.

Further, it said 54% of the consumers have purchased either a product or a service from their smartphones.

It opined that major e-commerce players like Flipkart and Quikr are serious about their plans to augment the m-commerce platform.

In 2014, 81 million units of the smart gadget were shipped to the country.

"Smartphones are already outpacing the growth of feature phones and are expected to show a massive 36% CAGR over the next five years making it to the 651 million mark by 2019... The unstoppable surge of smartphones in India continues with 29% of urban population with a base of 409 million users adding to its adoption," the research firm said in a statement.

A new era dawns for Apple Store shoppers as the appointment-only fittings for the fashion-focused Apple Watch begin. We grabbed one of the first appointments in the world to see how it really works.

SYDNEY, Australia -- The Apple Watch fitting experience begins today: a personalised, jewellery-style process to assist buyers in choosing the model, band and sizing to best suit their needs. Apple has made it clear this is a very different approach to selling iPhones and Macs -- there are no Apple Watches to be found in boxes on shelves, and reservations are required. Let's see how this works in the real world.

At the flagship Apple store here, it might only be the start of a preorder window but there was still a good crowd of shoppers eager to see the Apple Watch on display. There wasn't a crazy iPhone-style queue, though a few early arrivals were quickly offered appointments and told they could leave and return at the appointed time. We were told walkup appointments would be available, though appointments would be assigned time slots and told to browse while they waited or to return for their appointment later in the day.

Two new display tables were now in store. One, a long drop-in glass-covered table with all 38 models of Apple Watch on show -- from the entry-level Apple Watch Sport right through to the top of line Apple Watch Edition. The second was a hands-on display table with the steel Apple Watch running an interactive demo loop. You couldn't control the demo progress, but within each stage you could perform relevant interactions, from exploring your photo library, to reading messages, to feeling the new 'taptic' vibrations and tinkering with basic watch functions.

The world is getting a little bit smaller, thanks to a new international plan from Sprint that lets customers roam in 15 countries.
With Sprint's new International Value Roaming plan, announced Friday, travelers can check email and Facebook, download pictures and stay connected on a wireless Internet connection at no additional cost in Latin America, Europe and Japan. Subscribers with devices that are internationally.
compatible will get free text messaging and unlimited data roaming up to 2G speeds. Phone calls will cost 20 cents per minute in countries included in the plan.

Sprint executives say these international perks are features that consumers want. "The continuous feedback from our customers indicates how important it is to travel without the fear of high roaming charges," Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement.

It's unclear how customers will react to Sprint's new international plan. Like T-Mobile's offer, connection speeds for data downloads will be dramatically slower than on their home mobile networks. In the US, customers are used to speedy mobile downloads on 4G networks, but under the free international plans, speeds will be limited to the speed of a 2G network. For consumers it could feel the same as being downgraded from a broadband connection to dial-up Internet access.

Both plans will let customers pay extra for faster connections on 3G networks. Sprint customers can pay $15 for 100MB of data downloads on a one-day pass, $25 for 200MB on a seven-day pass and $50 for 500MB on a 14-day pass. The company doesn't charge for going over the data cap. Instead network speeds revert to 2G speeds when the data allotment is maxed out.

T-Mobile charges $15 for 100MB per day, $25 for 200MB per week, or $50 for 500MB for two weeks.

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