China Telecom and Orange Extend Strategic Partnership to Provide IoT Experience for Enterprises

China Telecom and Orange Business Services has announced the extension of their strategic partnership into the IoT space today at the launch event of "eSurfing on the Silk Road, IoT with the World" in Shanghai, China. The new cooperation will enable both companies to serve their respective enterprise customers through a combined footprint across three continents Asia, Europe and Africa.

Multinational customers of China Telecom and Orange will be able to deploy IoT and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services across each other's networks. China Telecom's enterprise customers with outbound IoT business can deploy their assets and offerings on the Orange networks in Europe and Africa.

Similarly, Orange global enterprise customers can leverage the rapidly growing Chinese market by relying on China Telecom's IoT network resources and business capabilities. Both partners propose a global solution to address local IoT connectivity requirements, leveraging eUICC capabilities and the commonly deployed Device Connectivity Platform of Ericsson for a seamless customer experience.

China Telecom and Orange will cooperate both commercially and technically to create new service models that support global IoT opportunities. Under this agreement, Orange will be one of China Telecom's preferred partners for connectivity in Europe and Africa, while China Telecom will support Orange for connectivity in China. Both companies also agree to jointly explore the potential of enhancing existing IoT capabilities and the application of new technologies such as mobile IoT in the global market.

Mr. Deng Xiao Feng, Managing Director of Global Business Department of China Telecom, said, "China is one of the fastest growing markets for IoT applications. China Telecom is working closely with Orange to push for the building of an innovative and advanced IoT solution to capture global IoT opportunities. China Telecom together with Orange will address the increasing IoT demand, and we are excited to support our enterprise customers with the IoT Open Platform, leveraging each other's strengths and capabilities.

We are able to expand business into other regions with an open, cooperative, mutually beneficial and win-win business collaboration. The fruits of global IoT development can benefit companies from each country."

Mr. Karsten Selle, Vice President, Finance & Administration of Orange Mobile Enterprise, said, "Orange Business Services is always striving for innovative solutions to respond to the global needs of its customers. We are looking forward to creating together with China Telecom true business benefits around the global IoT projects of our respective customers. With this extended footprint in Asia, we further strengthen our IoT and data analytics offering, Datavenue, with enhanced global connectivity capabilities."

China Telecom China Telecommunications Corporation ("China Telecom") is one of the largest state-owned telecommunication companies in China, with a total registered capital of RMB220.4 billion. At present, the size of China Telecom's total assets exceeds RMB 700 billion, with annual revenue of more than RMB 380 billion. Ranking 132nd in the 2016 Fortune Global 500, China Telecom was awarded the Most Honored Company, the Best Managed Company in the Asia Telecom Sector, as well as the Best Managed Company in Asia by esteemed international institutions for consecutive years.

Nokia 6 is coming to the US in July

HMD Global — the Finnish company that owns the rights to manufacture Nokia-branded smartphones — announced earlier this year that it would be releasing new midrange Nokia Android phones in the United States.
There's now have more information on the first Nokia phone to hit Stateside: the Nokia 6, which will be available in early July for $229.
The Nokia 6 is the largest of the three Android phones HMD Global announced at Mobile World Congress, featuring a 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage (expandable by microSD). On the software side of things, the 6 runs Android Nougat in its purest, unadulterated form — that means no bundled apps or overlaid skins. Plus, while the specs are decidedly average, the Nokia 6 does stand out with a metal unibody design built out of a single block of aluminum, which adds a premium touch to the otherwise midrange device.
According to HMD, the Nokia 6 will only offer full support for 4G LTE for T-Mobile customers. AT&T will be partially supported, while Sprint and Verizon CDMA-based networks won’t work at all.
The Nokia 6 will be available exclusively through Amazon sometime in early July in matte black and silver; additional “tempered blue” and copper colors will be offered later in the summer. While HMD has promised that the smaller Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 phones will also be making their way to the US as well, there’s still no news as to when those models will be available

Fujitsu to resell ImageWare biometric security solutions...as unit names new EMEA chief

Fujitsu is expanding its advanced biometric security solutions portfolio through a newly-signed agreement in which it will resell ImageWare Systems’ key security solutions including enterprise mobile biometric user authentication as a service. Under the agreement, Fujitsu not only extends its biometric identity and access management solutions to mobile devices but also to additional authentication methods including fingerprint, face, and voice recognition.

As a result, Fujitsu customers will now be able to deploy biometric authentication as a service running on the Fujitsu Cloud Service K5.

“Through this agreement with ImageWare Systems, our customers gain access to an enhanced portfolio of biometric security solutions that reduce the barriers to deploying highly secure biometric authentication,” said Thomas Bengs, director and head of Biometrics at Fujitsu in EMEIA. Businesses will also benefit from more choice than ever, both in terms of the technologies they deploy and the ability to offer authentication via mobile devices. Delivering biometric authentication as a service opens up many new use cases and reduces the complexity usually associated with security measures.”

Fujitsu’s current biometric identity and access management solutions, including its PalmSecure palm vein authentication solution, already use ImageWare System’s Biometric Engine as their backend identity storage and matching database.

The same technology is now available as a service, hosted on the Fujitsu Cloud Service K5. Fujitsu customers can quickly add highly secure biometric authentication to their security processes by deploying the ImageWare Systems GoVerifyID line of products.

Beginning in July, Fujitsu customers in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa will be available to purchase the ImageWare Systems solutions. Pricing will vary according to country and configuration.

“By taking advantage of our powerful biometrics solutions delivered via Fujitsu’s cloud-based security as a service, many more businesses can easily enhance their security,” said Jim Miller, chairman and CEO of ImageWare Systems. “The potential applications are plentiful: Enterprises can add features such as mobile security for application logins or manage access to controlled areas, while retailers can use biometrics to help prevent fraud or to manage loyalty programs. There are also many potential applications in the financial industry where confirming identity in online, mobile or ATM banking is crucial. Finally, in healthcare, biometrics authentication easily confirms patient identity, accelerating check-in for example during visits to the doctor.”

Previously reported in some quarters, Fujitsu recently signed an agreement to resell Nok Nok Labs’ S3 Authentication Suite to deliver end-to-end FIDO authentication to the Japanese market and worldwide to its global customer base.

In a related development, PFU Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited (Japan), has appointed Toru Maki as its new president and chief executive officer for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

PFU is a globally active IT provider that designs, manufactures and markets computer hardware, peripheral products and enterprise software. It is one of the leading providers of professional personal, desktop, workgroup and high-volume production scanners.

In his new role, Maki will be responsible to further expand PFU's position as the number one provider of document capture solutions in EMEA, said a statement from the company. Moreover, the company wants to achieve this by not only growing the hardware business but also putting a strong focus on the PaperStream and ScanSnap software and on professional services, it said.

Maki joined Fujitsu in 1982 and held various positions in finance and administration as well as management positions in the company's document scanner business. His last positions prior to taking over his new role were as head of the scanner business in India and senior director for international sales.

Speaking on his new role, Maki said: “Our company has always focused on its innovative power to build customer-oriented technology that has kept us at the forefront of the industry.” As president, I want to build on that and deepen our customer relationships in order to gain a thorough understanding of their business requirements,” he added.

Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

Travis Kalanick stepped down on Tuesday as chief executive of Uber, the ride-hailing service that he helped found in 2009 and built into a transportation colossus, after a shareholder revolt made it untenable for him to stay on at the company.

Mr. Kalanick’s exit came under pressure after hours of drama involving Uber’s investors, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked to remain anonymous because the details were confidential.

Earlier on Tuesday, five of Uber’s major investors demanded that the chief executive resign immediately. The investors included one of Uber’s biggest shareholders, the venture capital firm Benchmark, which has one of its partners, Bill Gurley, on Uber’s board. The investors made their demand for Mr. Kalanick to step down in a letter delivered to the chief executive while he was in Chicago, said the people with knowledge of the situation.

In the letter, titled “Moving Uber Forward” and obtained by The New York Times, the investors wrote to Mr. Kalanick that he must immediately leave and that the company needed a change in leadership. Mr. Kalanick, 40, consulted with at least one Uber board member, and after long discussions with some of the investors, he agreed to step down. He will remain on Uber’s board of directors.

“I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Mr. Kalanick said in a statement.

Uber’s board said in a statement that Mr. Kalanick had “always put Uber first” and that his stepping down as chief executive would give the company “room to fully embrace this new chapter in Uber’s history.” An Uber spokesman declined to comment further.

The move caps months of questions over the leadership of Uber, which has become a prime example of Silicon Valley start-up culture gone awry. The company has been exposed this year as having a workplace culture that included sexual harassment and discrimination, and it has pushed the envelope in dealing with law enforcement and even partners. That tone was set by Mr. Kalanick, who has aggressively turned the company into the world’s dominant ride-hailing service and upended the transportation industry around the globe.

Mr. Kalanick’s troubles began earlier this year after a former Uber engineer detailed what she said was sexual harassment at the company, opening the floodgates for more complaints and spurring internal investigations. In addition, Uber has been dealing with an intellectual property lawsuit from Waymo, the self-driving car business that operates under Google’s parent company, and a federal inquiry into a software tool that Uber used to sidestep some law enforcement.

Uber has been trying to move past its difficult history, which has grown inextricably tied to Mr. Kalanick. In recent months, Uber has fired more than 20 employees after an investigation into the company’s culture, embarked on major changes to professionalize its workplace, and is searching for new executives including a chief operating officer.

Mr. Kalanick last week said he would take an indefinite leave of absence from Uber, partly to work on himself and to grieve for his mother, who died last month in a boating accident. He said Uber’s day-to-day management would fall to a committee of more than 10 executives.

But the shareholder letter indicated that his taking time off was not enough for some investors who have pumped millions of dollars into the ride-hailing company, which has seen its valuation swell to nearly $70 billion. For them, Mr. Kalanick had to go.

The five shareholders who demanded Mr. Kalanick’s resignation include some of the technology industry’s most prestigious venture capital firms, which invested in Uber at an early stage of the company’s life, as well as a mutual fund firm. Apart from Benchmark, they are First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, Menlo Ventures and Fidelity Investments, which together own more than a quarter of Uber’s stock. Because some of the investors hold a type of stock that endows them with an outsize number of votes, they have about 40 percent of Uber’s voting power.

Benchmark, Lowercase, First Round, Menlo Ventures and Fidelity did not respond to requests for comment.

But on Twitter, Mr. Gurley of Benchmark, one of the earliest supporters of Mr. Kalanick at Uber, said of the executive, “There will be many pages in the history books devoted to @travisk — very few entrepreneurs have had such a lasting impact on the world.”

Mr. Kalanick’s resignation opens questions of who may take over Uber, especially since the company has been so molded in his image. And Mr. Kalanick will probably remain a presence there since he still retains control of a majority of Uber’s voting shares.

WhatsApp now a major force in news media – rated high for fake news

WhatsApp is becoming one of the prevailing ways people discover and discuss news, according to a study. But use of the messaging app appears to vary widely between countries.

In Malaysia, more than 50% of those surveyed said they used WhatsApp for news at least once a week. But in the US, the figure was only 3%, and in the UK it was 5%. The Digital News Report also indicates the Brexit debate has led to growing mistrust of the UK's media.

It said only 43% of respondents declared that the news could be trusted - down from 50% last year - with the BBC in particular criticised for having both a pro-EU bias and failing to expose the "distortions" of the leave campaign.

The research was carried out by the Reuters Institute For The Study of Journalism and covered 34 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia, in addition to Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was sponsored by the BBC and Google among others. A total of 71,805 people were questioned by YouGov in January and February to generate its data.

The results indicate that Facebook remains the most popular social media and messaging service for news engagement in all but two countries - Japan and South Korea - where, respectively, YouTube and Kakao Talk dominate.

But it adds that use of Facebook for news had dipped in more than half of all the territories where a year-on-year comparison was possible. By contrast, sharing news stories and chatting about them appears to be on the rise within private instant messaging apps, and WhatsApp in particular.

According to the report, WhatsApp is now the second most popular social service for news in nine of the 36 locations, and the third most popular platform in a further five countries. The authors provide several potential explanations for WhatsApp's rise.

Its use of end-to-end encryption means messages can only be seen by their senders and recipients, offering users protection against being monitored by the authorities. "Some of the biggest growth we've seen is in places like Turkey, where it's positively dangerous for people to express anti-government preferences on open networks like Facebook," explained one of the study's authors, Nic Newman. "As a result people are using closed groups where they are more confident of expressing their views."

WhatsApp has also benefited from the fact that in much of Latin America and elsewhere mobile networks are offering unlimited data use within the program, so encouraging its use. Furthermore, several Spanish and Chilean media outlets have embraced the app. Radio stations commonly ask listeners to send in short voice recordings via the service, and local news sites have added share-to-WhatsApp buttons to their pages.

However, Mr Newman said beyond that, it was difficult for the media to take advantage of the app's popularity beyond publishing stories that people want to share. "You can set up branded areas or groups of people on your own, but it's incredibly clunky and time consuming, and there are few tools to help," he explained. "And part of WhatsApp's appeal is that users don't get interrupted by brands, making it a very pure form of messaging. That's something [its developers] will really try to hold to."

The report also highlights widespread concerns about so-called "fake news". It highlights users' suspicions that social media's lack of rules and use of viral algorithms have helped low-quality false stories spread quickly.

But it says there is also strong distrust of the mainstream media, in particular in Asian and central, southern and eastern European countries, where the industry is perceived as being too close to government.

Chinese Partner Mobile Unveils PS 3 Phone – hints on local phones production on First Anniversary

Partner Mobile, one of the Nigeria’s newest mobile phone brands has launched PS 3 mobile phone into the market to celebrate its one year anniversary in the Nigerian. PS 3 is said to be coming into the market to consolidate on the innovative ingenuity of the brand following the success of PS1 PS2 and PS Power.

The phone is an android OS 7.1 mobile phone that comes with deca-core 2.6GHz processor. With a 5.5inch FHD IPS LCD, the phone comes with an innovative dual 13MP back camera and an 8MP front camera. It has a 3350Mah battery and comes with a RAM of 4GB and a ROM of 64GB.

Describing the performance of Partner Mobile brand in the Nigerian market for the past twelve months, the Chief Operating Officer of the company, Simon Klepper, said the brand has been successful despite the challenging Nigerian economy, the decreasing value of Naira and political challenges. Klepper attributed the success of the brand to true commitment and perseverance shown by the company. He added that Partner Mobile in the coming years would deeply penetrate the Nigerian market and also establish itself as a reputable company in the country.

“Partner Mobile’s first year in the Nigerian market has got to be viewed as a success. The last year has been a challenging one for the whole of Nigeria with the current dwindling economy, the decreasing value of the Naira and political change. For any company to launch itself under such conditions it has to show true commitment and perseverance, Partner Mobile has displayed these qualities,” Klepper said.

Also commenting on the company’s penetration into the Nigerian market, Marketing Manager, Partner Mobile, Ifeoluwa Akerele-Molokwu, said the brand name has been marketed to a large extent. According to her, “Partner Mobile devices have been made to fit into every social and economic class.”

She said: “We have our gadgets currently in major stores across the country and we are still working towards reaching more customers by partnering with other dealers.

“We have made available devices to fit into every social and economic class and also putting into consideration the current economic situation. Better said, we’ve got a Partner for everyone.”

Unveiling the marketing strategies deployed in ensuring that many Nigerians became aware of Partner Mobile brand, the marketing manager emphasised that they employed the strategy of pricing and innovation, which is equally in line with their promise to release updates, deliver the latest innovation and at affordable prices.

The firm, which entered the Nigerian market a year ago, said all the logistics have been put in place to enable it commence the production of features phone from quarter one (Q1), 2018.

Speaking in Lagos, at the weekend, the Technical Partner, Partner Mobile, Shola Akintola, said the plant would be sited either in Abeokuta or Lagos, saying all the component parts of the phone would be manufactured in Nigeria. He however, identified the country’s erratic power supply as a major disincentive to investment.

Canon expands monochrome print portfolio- the varioPRINT series

Canon Europe has launched its new varioPRINT 140 series of production printers, delivering productivity gains compared with previous devices. The new varioPRINT 140 is capable of printing 143 images per minute in both simplex and duplex modes, making it the fastest printer in the light- and mid-volume production segments.

The printer can deliver monthly print volumes of up to 800 000 copies, more than doubling productivity compared with the varioPRINT 135. Peak monthly production volumes may reach up to 2,2-million A4 prints.

Together with the varioPRINT 140, new varioPRINT 130 and varioPRINT 115 models are also being introduced, offering speeds of 133 and 117 A4 images per minute respectively.

The introduction of Océ PRISMAsync 5 technology further boosts productivity, using remote printer driver technologies to enable production planning and job scheduling up to eight hours in advance.

The remote app is downloadable to a smartphone or personal tablet, and allows operators to focus on other tasks while receiving real-time notifications of upcoming operator actions, such as loading media or adding consumables, or alerts of immediate actions needed. One or multiple PRISMAsync Print Server-driven digital presses can be monitored at a glance, helping expedite manual interventions to increase device uptime and productivity.

PRISMAsync 5 offers new impositioning possibilities, such as layout, trim and cover, alongside an embedded JDF/JMF interface. The new controller also enables PSPs and in-house print departments to work more securely, thanks to a configurable user interface which allows for audit logging and back-up and restore capabilities. New features such as page numbering, special book copy functionality and an intuitive copier interface improve usability, particularly in ‘walk-up’ environments.

The varioPRINT 140 series offers a full range of in-line finishing options, including stapling, saddle stitching, folding, die punching, inserting, ring binding and high-capacity stacking. The new W1 booklet finisher offers a new saddle stitch option for flat finished booklets, while the updated F1 booklet trimmer expands customers’ trimming capabilities.

A new professional punch is available, offering A4+, A3 and A4 SEF punching in one model, and with the capability to handle heavier media up to 300 gsm. The open Document Finishing Device (DFD) Interface also enables in-line connectivity to specialist, third-party finishing devices. For back-up or walk-up environments, the new printer features a simplified catch tray enabling a simple ‘no finishing’ configuration.