Fitbit continues to dominate as Fitness Wearables market lead by 3.1% in Third quarter :IDC Report

On one hand the smartwatch market took a tumble this quarter and on the other overall wearables market continued its growth with a 3.1% year over year growth in third quarter of 2016. otal wearables shipments reached 23 million in the quarter, according to data from the International Data Corporation, (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker.

Fitbit Charge 2

Fitbit was once again the market leader in 3Q16 as the vendor released a long awaited refresh for the Charge HR with the Charge 2. Despite recent negativity surrounding the company's long-term strategy and stock price, IDC expects Fitbit to continue leading the pack in the near term. The acquisition of Coin and the potential to expand into the smartwatch category present an opportunity for the company to be more than just a fitness brand. It is also speculated that Fitbit is buying smartwatch maker Pebble.

Top Five Wearable Device Vendors, Worldwide Shipments, Market Share and Year-Over-Year

Top Five Wearable Device Vendors

Basic wearables, primarily comprised of fitness bands, accounted for 85% of the market and experienced double-digit growth. Much of the increase was attributed to the launch of newer models, an expanding user base, and an enticing summer season that allowed people to step out of their homes. IDC expects the momentum for basic wearables to continue for the remainder of 2016 as the holiday season is now in full swing. However, smart wearables capable of running third party apps will likely continue to struggle in the near term.

"It's still early days, but we're already seeing a notable shift in the market," said Jitesh Ubrani senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. "Where smartwatches were once expected to take the lead, basic wearables now reign supreme. Simplicity is a driving factor and this is well reflected in the top vendor list as four out of five offer a simple, dedicated fitness device. Meanwhile, from a design perspective, many devices are focusing on fashion first while allowing the technology to blend in with the background."

"Smart wearables have been down in recent quarters, but clearly not out," noted Ramon Llamas, research manager for IDC's Wearables team. "As user tastes change, so will their needs. That's the opportunity for smart wearables with multi-functionality and third-party applications, both for consumers and business users. To get there, we need to see more intuitive user interfaces, seamless user experiences, standalone connectivity, and applications that go beyond health and fitness and into personal and professional productivity."

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Huawei Wins 2016 “Best Consumer Electronics Brand” in the Chinese brand ranking category

World's third largest Smartphone manufacturer brand Huawei was announced the winner of ‘Best Consumer Electronics Brand’ during the “Best Brands 2016 – the Chinese brand ranking” by The Serviceplan Group, Europe´s largest independent communications agency, jointly with GfK, the world’s renowned market research organization, at an awards ceremony which took place in Shanghai.

The Best Brands was launched in Germany in 2004 with aim to recognize the most successful and powerful brands. The marketing awards were introduced in China the first time in 2014. It is the first brand ranking in China to take a comprehensive view of exclusively the consumer’s opinions, evaluating it based on both emotional and behavioral dimensions – creating transparency and objectivity. Other winners this year include Airbnb-Best Disruptive Brand, WeChat-Best Digital Economy Brand, and BMW-Best Emotionally Bonding Brand.

 

"On one hand, innovation leads our business. On the other hand, passion fuels our brand" - Ms. Glory Zhang, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Consumer Business

Speaking at the event, Ms. Glory Zhang, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Consumer Business, said “Our business is growing fast. In only five years, we have grown into one of the world’s top three smartphone brands. Interbrand ranked Huawei as one of the top 100 brands since 2014. This year, we are taking a step ahead, moving to number 72. Innovation is at the core of our business. We focus on meaningful innovations, which are vial important to the consumer experience. This is why we breakthrough in performance and power consumption. Huawei has worked with Leica to redefine smartphone photography. With the world’s first Leica dual-camera design, Huawei P9 has helped over 10 million people around the world to capture the wonderful moments in their life and turn them into artistic photos."

2016 Major Brand Awards

Interbrand Best Global Brands 2016: Huawei No.72

The Best Global Brands is an annual report published by Interbrand, identifying the world’s 100 most valuable brands. The ranking is based on three key components that contribute to a brand’s cumulative value: the financial performance of the branded products and services, the role the brand plays in influencing customer choice and the strength the brand has to command a premium price or secure earnings for the company. Interbrand is part of the Omnicom Group Inc. Huawei and Lenovo are the only two Chinese companies that made into Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2016 rankings. Interbrand ranked Huawei as one of the top 100 brands since 2014. This year, Huawei ranks #72, up from #88 last year.

 

2016 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands: Huawei No.50

BrandZ is the world's largest brand equity database containing data on brands gathered from interviews with over 150,000 people every year in up to 400 studies around the world. The BrandZ Global Top 100 was launched in 2006 by Millward Brown, which is apart of WPP, the world’s largest communications services group. Huawei ranks No. 50 in 2016, up from No. 70 in 2015.

2016 Best Brands China: Best Consumer Electronics Brand

Launched in Germany since 2004 by The Serviceplan Group, Europe´s largest independent communications agency, jointly with GfK, the world renowned market research organization, the Best Brands was designed to recognize the most successful and powerful brands. The marketing awards were introduced in China the first time in 2014. It is the first brand ranking in China to take a comprehensive view of exclusively the consumer’s opinions, evaluating it based on both emotional and behavioral dimensions – creating transparency and objectivity. Huawei was named “Best Consumer Electronics Brand”, beating other brands competing for the category including Apple and Canon. 

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CouponRani Review: Get extra discounts on online shopping with lot of exclusive coupons in hand

The current situation in country was supposed to be chaotic because of the demonetization announced by current government, however that's not the case the life is going and the business as well. Thanks to the alternates to cash payments available in market. Well less or more the offline business has been affected by the move but for online business its a blessing in disguise. First it is affected very less with the recent move, may be more for cash on delivery orders  and second the user base has increased as with the cash crunch in current scenario online shopping and payments makes more sense. Not only new users are added but also the existing ones who were registered but not regular buyer have turned to online shopping. As for In store shopping people use to rely on their bargaining skills to save some money similarly in online shopping you have to be smart enough to know some hacks and tools to get extra discounts. (Also see Online vs In Store shopping scene in India).

Coupon Rani homepage

There are several ways to save money while shopping online as comparing the prices on different websites and the discount coupons play a very major role in this. These coupons are not readily available on the host website and one has to get them either by external websites or personally as promotional activities from the store. Today we are going to talk about one such website CouponRani.com , where you can get these discount coupons for variety of online stores. 

If you are someone who know where you are going to shop for something you can directly search with the store name on the website and get all the available coupons. For example you can just visit Amazon offers section if you are going to shop from Amazon, or you can just explore the website for various stores and their coupons. This is pretty much the same what you get with other coupon websites but then there is an exclusive coupon section where in you get access to the discount coupons which are exclusive to CouponRani and hence there chances to work are even higher than the normal ones. The UI is user friendly and its pretty clean in navigation, you have a Home link, then you can browse either stores or you can visit various categories and get coupons from different stores in that category along with already mentioned exclusive coupons link. On the home page you have the slide show with most popular stores and offers, then we can see different cards such as featured coupons and then featured stores below that. On the side bar one can have a look on the top Exclusive coupons and also subscribe to the updates by entering his/her email id.

When you scroll down to bottom you can also see some stats there as how many coupons redeemed so far , number of coupons available, number of exclusive coupons and number of merchants listed on the website, at the time of writing these numbers read 16,236,915 & 14,840 &  376 & 3519 respectively. 

CouponRani offers you lot more than just the coupons when you search for it, but also has a chrome extension which instantly gives you relevant coupons when you are shopping on any of the listed websites, this is the feature or module which we liked the most as many times we just don't remember to search for a coupon while shopping, in such cases this tool eliminates the need of manual search as it works automatically as you shop on the host website.

So, the bottom line is CouponRani does saves you lot of money and hence whether you have to order a pendrive or you want to order fresh meals online you get the convenience as well as save money with the use of various coupons from the portal. To try this website and give us your feedback in comments section.

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Blaupunkt mobile accessories review: value for money with high quality standards

Germany based technology and consumer lifestyle brand Blaupunkt recently forayed into Indian markets. Blaupunkt has partnered with New Delhi based Vidur and Co. to introduce the products in SAARC markets. We have got three products from the company for review and we would like to share the experience using these accessories with you. To begin with the accessories we got for review are Blaupunkt wired earphone, car charger and USB cable.

Blaupunkt Earphones, Car Charger and USB Cable

 USB Cable:

The USB Cable from Blaupunkt we got is a micro to USB 2.0 cable with quick charging and quick data sync support, the micro USB part looks sturdy and hence gives confidence for durability of the same. The cable comes with more copper cables inside as claimed by the company and hence it supports Quick charge without any issues. (Quick charge capability depends on your charger output and phone SoC support). The cable comes with International Certification Quality and UI Approved cables and ROHS.

Car Charger:

The Car charger excited me the most as it offers so much for the price its available on Amazon. The car charger turned out to be a multi functional tool, first it has dual output, so you can charge two devices simultaneously. Each port can give 2.4 A max and 3.0 A max in total, which means you can get a quick charge when charging single device however while charging two devices at a time expect more time to get full charge.

This is more or less expected from a car charger but it comes with two pretty useful functionalities as the tip can be used to break the car glass in case of any emergency, and if you are stuck with your seat belt it has a very safe cutter which can be rubbed against the seat belt to cut it, if any such situation arises.

The coolest thing about this accessory is that it has a blue back lit branding when connected with the power socket of the car.

Blaupunkt car charger  in Action

The Ear-Phones:

We got in Earphones, with flat cable which makes them tangle free and easy to handle, we liked the slider volume control where in you can slide the slider down to lower the volume and move it upwards to increase it. The headphones comes with silicone ear tips and offers average bass and can handle a wider range of music for the one who wants to enjoy music on the go. 

The ear phones comes with built in mic and pause button as well but it is not mounted on the same attachment as volume slider which adds to some confusion while using it and I personally did not like two different attachments which we are used to see as one. To conclude the earphones with tangle free cable, slider volume control and ability to handle a high range of frequency that too without cutting a deep hole in your pocket makes this earphone to enter our recommendation list.

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CAPDESE join hands with YMS Mobitech to spread its reach, targets over $60 million sales in next 3 years

CAPDASE, the mobile accessories manufacturer inked a strategic partnership with YMS Mobitech app-based e-distribution ecosystem to spread its reach across YMS’ network of 11,262 retailers and 361 distributors across 383 cities. CAPDASE also announced its intent to set up its first manufacturing unit in India, outlining an aggressive sales target of 60 million dollars over the next three years.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, CAPDASE currently caters over 45 countries worldwide with strong presence in key smartphone markets of China, Indonesia, Philippines and Hong Kong. In 2016 alone, CAPDASE has sold more than 100 million mobile accessories. CAPDASE’s top product line includes Armour Suit Case for iPhone 7 & 7+, Quick Charger for car and wall charger, High protection tempered glass for most of the smart phone models, lifestyle car mint series, amongst others.

R-L Ajay Laddha, co-founder, YMS Mobitech and Stanley Chu, Founder and Director, CAPDASE

Making the announcement, Roy Chan, Channel Head-Asia Pacific, CAPDASE said, “While the accessories segment mirrors growth in the smartphone market, demand for varied and top-of-the line accessories is set to grow multi-fold in India. Phase 1 of our partnership with YMS Mobitech will involve reaching out to the metros and over 100 tier-1 cities and towns. Our target is to reach sales in excess of 10 mn USD in the financial year 2017-18, and grow from there.”

Talking about the collaboration, Ajay Laddha, Co-founder, YMS Mobitech Pvt Ltd said, “We are excited and honored to be CAPDASE’s partner in its offline retail journey in India. The mobile handset market in India has witnessed exponential growth over the last few years, leading to a surge in demand for mobile phone accessories. E-distribution platforms like YMS Mobitech will help high-end accessories players like CAPDASE make a successful transition from just online to offline presence as  manufacturers can directly bill to Retailers as per their need – making it more efficient and at lesser cost. I am optimistic that our wide-spread and strong distribution channel will enable CAPDASE to gain valuable competitive edge and reach out to every single handset user in the country.”

Recently, YMS Mobitech announced its tie-up with leading smartphone manufacturer, Mi India to distribute its range of accessories in key states of Eastern India. The e-distribution company is also the Distributor (West Zone) for end-to-end sale of LeEco Mobiles in India. 

The YMS e-distribution network boasts of over 11,262 retailers and 361 distributors across 383 cities in what is India’s largest app-based distribution ecosystem, guaranteeing on-demand sales with zero dead stock and zero loss of business opportunity. Its mobile app can keep a track of all tasks & reports via the YMS Mobile App and a web dashboard.

YMS Mobitech also creates financial products for the electronics industry, under its brand Apps You Need, and uses its technology-driven platform to sell and monitor these products. Few months ago, it also launched an accessories and IoT brand CULT.

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