Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi is definitely doing well on its home market. The Brand has managed to build up a lot of user trust and even a formidable fan base, thanks to competitive pricing and Apple-style viral marketing. Expanding into international markets has been on Xiaomi’s roadmap for some time and the company has already made significant steps to enter the emerging India market.

However, this might be Xiaomi’s biggest plunge into India sales yet, as the company announced that it will be offering its products in brick and mortar stores throughout the country. Currently, Xiaomi devices are selling mostly through India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkat and that partnership is sure to continue. However, Xiaomi now hopes that through collaboration with Redington – one of the country’s leading cellphone distributors, it will gain access to around 1000 to 1500 physical stores throughout 15 major cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mysore and Visakhapatnam.

Those stores will initially offer a total of four Xiaomi products – Redmi 2, Mi 4, Mi 4i and Mi Pad for INR 5,999, INR 14,999, INR 12,999 and INR 12,999 respectively. The hopes are that the product line will expand soon and more locations will be added to the list as well. As for this first phase, Xiaomi plans to launch it in the next 45 to 60 days. If everything goes smoothly and the idea picks up speed, Manu Jain, India operations head at Xiaomi, believes that a total of 25% to 30% of all of the company’s sales in India will be from physical stores.

This is quite an ambitious step for Xiaomi, but definitely not one taken lightly. A few months ago the Chinese manufacturer entered into an exclusive partnership with The Mobile Stores – another India retailer. The deal included selling the Redmi Note 4G and Mi 4 smartphones in physical stores, mostly within the capital city. We are not certain what has become of the said venture, but it can definitely be seen as a smaller scale field test for the expansion.

Last, but not least, to reaffirm its intentions for the India market, Xiaomi has also announced that it will set up a research and development unit in Bangalore. All things considered, the Chinese company is slowly, cautiously, but steadily covering new ground and the emerging India market is an ideal place to start. Hopefully this might be the stepping stone Xiaomi needs to enter the US market as well, which VP Hugo Barra has hinted is also on the roadmap, albeit still at least an year away.

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Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi is definitely doing well on its home market. The Brand has managed to build up a lot of user trust and even a formidable fan base, thanks to competitive pricing and Apple-style viral marketing. Expanding into international markets has been on Xiaomi’s roadmap for some time and the company has already made significant steps to enter the emerging India market.

However, this might be Xiaomi’s biggest plunge into India sales yet, as the company announced that it will be offering its products in brick and mortar stores throughout the country. Currently, Xiaomi devices are selling mostly through India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkat and that partnership is sure to continue. However, Xiaomi now hopes that through collaboration with Redington – one of the country’s leading cellphone distributors, it will gain access to around 1000 to 1500 physical stores throughout 15 major cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mysore and Visakhapatnam.

Those stores will initially offer a total of four Xiaomi products – Redmi 2, Mi 4, Mi 4i and Mi Pad for INR 5,999, INR 14,999, INR 12,999 and INR 12,999 respectively. The hopes are that the product line will expand soon and more locations will be added to the list as well. As for this first phase, Xiaomi plans to launch it in the next 45 to 60 days. If everything goes smoothly and the idea picks up speed, Manu Jain, India operations head at Xiaomi, believes that a total of 25% to 30% of all of the company’s sales in India will be from physical stores.

This is quite an ambitious step for Xiaomi, but definitely not one taken lightly. A few months ago the Chinese manufacturer entered into an exclusive partnership with The Mobile Stores – another India retailer. The deal included selling the Redmi Note 4G and Mi 4 smartphones in physical stores, mostly within the capital city. We are not certain what has become of the said venture, but it can definitely be seen as a smaller scale field test for the expansion.

Last, but not least, to reaffirm its intentions for the India market, Xiaomi has also announced that it will set up a research and development unit in Bangalore. All things considered, the Chinese company is slowly, cautiously, but steadily covering new ground and the emerging India market is an ideal place to start. Hopefully this might be the stepping stone Xiaomi needs to enter the US market as well, which VP Hugo Barra has hinted is also on the roadmap, albeit still at least an year away.

Source |…

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Apple Music is now a little over a month into its existence and yet the Cupertino streaming service has already managed to stir up a lot of controversy and make more than a few enemies. Like most new Apple services, its music streaming platform was launched with a flying start – a rich library of music already acquired and about 11 million subscribers already signed up (9 million of which on a free trial, but still).

As most of you might remember, the US tech giant was accused by several parties, including major competitor Spotify of breaking antitrust regulations and trying to strike exclusive and unfair deals with major music labels, including Universal, Sony and Warner. The European Commission is just one of the parties that took it upon itself to look into the matter and according to latest developments – has found no evidence of Apple deals with record labels intended to block rivals.

The scandal revolves around two main accusations. One is that while dealing with the aforementioned record labels, Apple allegedly pressured said parties to cut off content to Spotify’s free, ad-supported users. This, of course would be devastating for the service which currently has 55 million free users and only 20 million paying for premium access. There was even mention of an offer extended from Apple to Universal Music, saying that the tech giant would reimburse lost royalties if the latter would stop providing music videos to YouTube.

The other point of concern is the limitations Apple is constantly tightening around third party music streaming apps on the App Store. Jango, Spotify, Rhapsody and others have often complained of being deliberately suffocated – an issue that is also being looked into. For instance, when a user subscribes to a music streaming service through Apple’s App Store, it in tern, is entitled to 30% of the proceeds, which forces higher end-user subscriptions and makes ad-supported delivery almost impossible.

The EU might have concluded with its investigation, but the scandal is far from over. It the US both the state and federal agencies are knee deep in the investigation and a statement should come soon.

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As announced last week, Best Buy has started selling the Apple Watch in the US, hence becoming the first third-party retailer to carry the wearable device. You can purchase the smartwatch from its website as well as around 100 retail locations.

However, what’s worth mentioning here is that not all the models of the device are available on Best Buy – although it’s carrying all Sport models, stainless steel models are currently limited to black or white sport band, or the Milanese loop, and the luxurious gold Edition isn’t available at all.

Several accessories, including the company’s sport and Milanese bands as well as third-party bands, cases, and stands are also available.

Released back in April, the Apple Watch is already available online, and at Apple Stores and some high-end fashion boutiques. The Canadian arm of Best Buy will begin selling the wearable on August 14, i.e. next week.

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Market research firm ComScore has released its latest numbers for the US smartphone market revealing an increase in iOS’ market share and a slight decrease in Android’s share of the market.

Android remains the top smartphone platform in the country with 51.6% share of the market, slightly down from the 52.4% it had in the month of March. On the other hand, iOS’ share was up from 42.6% to 44.1%. Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Symbian rounded up the top-5 with 2.9 (down from 3.3), 1.2 (down from 1.6) and 0.1% share, respectively.

As for smartphone manufacturers, Apple continued to be at the top with 44.1% market share, while Samsung came in second with 28.1% share of the market. LG, Motorola, and HTC rounded up the top-5 with 8.3%, 4.9%, and 3.4% share, respectively.

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When it was announced back in October of last year, the Oppo R5 was the world’s thinnest smartphone, with its 4.85mm profile. This, coupled with its frame made from 3D-welded aluminum alloy, made it quite crave-worthy even if spec-wise it was nothing but a mid-ranger.

Time has passed, though, and it looks like its original asking price of $499 (or €399 in the EU) has become a bit too steep for what this phone actually offers. So Oppo went ahead and started a “flash sale” for the R5 on its official online store.

That’s probably the Chinese company’s way of enacting a price cut without calling it that, since there’s seemingly no end date for this flash sale anywhere to be found.

The bottom line is this: you can now grab an Oppo R5 for just $249 if you’re in the US, or €239 if you’re in the EU. Obviously you’re getting a SIM-free and unlocked device.

The Oppo R5 comes with a 5.2-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 5 MP selfie snapper, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 615 SoC at the helm (with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at up to 1.7 GHz), 2GB of RAM, 16GB of non-expandable storage, and a non-removable 2,000 mAh battery. It runs Color OS 2.0 based on Android 4.4…

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Following its latest update, which is already available in the iTunes App Store, Google Maps for iOS now comes with a night mode for the navigation screen.

It’s incredibly surprising that this feature has so far been missing from the app’s iOS version, especially since the exact same functionality has been available in Google Maps for Android for a very long time.

Regardless, it’s now in there, so your iPhone won’t blind you anymore while you’re using Google Maps to navigate at night. Google Maps 4.9 for iOS also comes with the ability for you to label places so you can see them on your map and in search suggestions, and edit the photo captions you’ve posted. Additionally, the usual unnamed bug fixes are supposedly in too.

So you might not consider this a big update, were it not for that glaring omission of the night mode, which is now finally…

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Next week, on August 13, Xiaomi will officially unveil MIUI 7, the latest version of its Android-based mobile operating system. We’ve already heard that the Redmi Note 2 might finally debut at the same event, and now we can apparently add another device to the list.

It looks like the Redmi 2 Prime will be launched in India soon. That’s because it was listed by Amazon India for a while, and through that listing we have information about its specs.

The Redmi 2 Prime is essentially going to be nothing but the slightly beefed up version of the original Redmi 2 which got official at the beginning of this year. This variation is already up for grabs in China with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, and for some reason Xiaomi will offer it as a newly named phone in India.

The rest of the specs are shared with the entry-level model, so you’re still going to get MIUI 6 based on Android 4.4 KitKat, a 4.7-inch 720p touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, a 2 MP selfie snapper, and a 2,200 mAh battery. At the helm will be the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC with a 1.2 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53…

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While the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+ are widely expected to be officially unveiled at the Unpacked event taking place on August 13, now a new leak is confirming their names. Furthermore, both phones are going to be sold by Verizon, perhaps unsurprisingly.

We know all this thanks to the image you can see below, which is purported to be an upcoming inventory listing from Costco.

That’s not all it reveals, though. There is going to be a Droid flagship this year too, it turns out, and it will be called Droid Turbo 2. Even if this isn’t mentioned in the listing, there’s no reason to think any company other than Motorola is producing it.

No specs have been outed this time around, so the Droid Turbo 2 remains a bit of mystery in this regard. That said, the Note 5 and S6 edge+ have been leaked an incredible amount of times already, so there really is little we don’t already know about them.

It looks like Costco is going to be offering Verizon’s version of the Note 5 in black and white with 32GB of storage, while the S6 edge+ will also be stocked in its 64GB iteration, in the same color versions. Of course there could be more hues and storage versions to come, or perhaps this retailer will only sell a subset of what will be available from day one.

It’s unclear when any of these handsets will actually be in stores, but from this point on it’s probably just a matter of…

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Back in June Motorola started a summer-themed promotion in the UK, and it looks like that turned out to be successful. That’s because the company is now holding yet another summer sale in the UK. It’s going to happen until August 31, so you still have plenty of time to take advantage of it.

By far the biggest deal in terms of savings is offered on the Moto X (2nd gen), which is unsurprising given that its two successors, the Moto X Play and the Moto X Style, have already been announced.

Yet if you don’t mind owning last year’s flagship, you can now purchase it for £155 less than its normal price. The new starting price is £240 when you order it through Motorola’s Moto Maker customization service. That’s not bad for a handset that was considered high-end in 2014.

Motorola is also shaving £10 off the price of the Moto E (2nd gen), taking it down to £99 in the process. Although this isn’t much in absolute terms, it’s still essentially 10% off.

To be able to take advantage of either offer, you’ll need to insert a special promo code in the system on checkout. For the Moto X (2nd gen), the code you need is UKSUMMERSALE1, while for the Moto E (2nd gen) simply input UKSUMMERSALE2 into the appropriate…

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