CCP Proposes Guidelines for Telcos To Stop Deceptive Marketing / Advertising

Competition Commission of Pakistan has prepared Deceptive Marketing Guidelines draft for telecommunication companies as part of its efforts to protect consumers from anti-competitive behavior through ensuring compliance in telecom sector sales, marketing, advertising, and communication in all forms across all mediums, online and Point of Sale (PoS).

The draft guidelines have been shared with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority and other telecom companies and have been placed on the commission’s website for soliciting feedback and suggestions from stakeholders.

The companies have been advised to bear in mind the legal implications that may arise out of certain practices dealing with, like distribution of false information, deception, fine print, disclaimer and qualifications, importance of substantiation of claims, essential terms and conditions, omissions, puffery, price disclosure, comparative advertising, promotional contents and, telemarketing.

The Draft Guidelines present the approach taken by the commission in its decisions regarding deceptive marketing practices and the approach that it may take towards certain marketing practices by telecommunication service providers.

However, the guidelines are not exhaustive and the approach of the commission shall depend upon the particular facts and circumstances of each case. As it is not possible to predict future behaviour of the undertakings involved in the telecommunication sector, the commission will not, in any way, be restricted to look into matters that have not been mentioned in these guidelines.

The effort has been made in the guidelines to provide guidance on what may constitute as deceptive marketing practices and avoid actions that may amount to violating Section 10 and other provisions of the competition act.

The Draft Guidelines have been prepared in light of best international practices after reviewing several documents and guidelines published by jurisdictions namely, the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong, and draw knowledge and experience from jurisdictions that have similar provisions as those of Section 10 of the Competition Act. The principles contained in the guidelines will be applied and further developed and refined by the commission from time to time in individual cases.

HP Slate 7 Affordable 7-inch Android Tablet

At the Mobile World Congress 2013, HP announced the new Slate 7 that is the company’s first attempt in the consumer Android tablet market. Available at an affordable price of $169.99, HP’s offering will be competing with Google’s Nexus 7 and Asus’s MemoPad. Running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the tablet offers Google experience with Google Now, YouTube, Google+ and access to Google Play Store.

While the price of the Slate 7 is quite attractive, the hardware of the Slate 7 may not be able to impressive you. It is powered by an dual-core 1.6GHz Cortex A-9 processor and 1GB of RAM. Its 7-inch 1024×600 multitouch display uses High-aperture-ratio Field Fringe Switching (HFFS) panel for wide viewing angle. There is a 3 Megapixel main camera on the back and a VGA front-facing camera for video chat. It even includes Beats Audio for rich sound and of course, you can expect support for WiFi connectivity. The Android tablet comes pre-loaded with HP’s ePrint application that allows users to easily print at home or on the go wirelessly.

HP will release the Slate 7 in the US in April.

 

Dell reports 8% revenue decrease this year as compared to 2011

Dell has posted the results for its fourth quarter and they look quite bad for the company as it goes into privatization. There was an 11 % decrease in revenue this quarter as compared to the last year’s same quarter as it dropped from $16 billion to $14.3 billion. Comparison over the year states that last year the revenue was $62 billion while this year it dropped by 8 %, making it $56.9 billion. Net income also dropped to $530 million with a percentage decrease of 31 %, from $764 million from the same quarter of the last year.

On the other hand the revenue for the networking department of Dell increased by 42 % with a 100 % increase in Force10 business. The 12G PowerEdge servers of Dell comprised of 80 % of the revenue generated from servers, which in turn showed a 5 % increase in the revenue. Quest Software delivered more than $200 million in revenue.

The Enterprise solutions department solely, saw an increase of 6 % in revenue making it to $5.2 billion, whereas Dell Wyse Orders, also considered in enterprise virtualization solutions, had an increased demand of 25 % as compared to the revenue last year.

USF Pakistan progresses in rural areas under PM Raja Parvez Ashraf

In an ceremony in Sanghar on Saturday 24th February, the Prime Minister, Raja Parvez Ashraf inaugurated a number of telecommunications and health and education projects of worth Rs. 1.7 billion. During his speech on the occassion he said that the social and economic development of the country was linked to the growth in telecom sector and that the government was putting its best efforts  to bring all parts of the country at the same level.

The efforts of Universal Service Fund (USF) are the depiction of the efforts of the government where USF was able to provide basic telephony and data services to 213 villages in Mirpurkhas and 426 villages in Dadu with subsidies of  Rs. 930 million and Rs 250 million respectively under their Rural Telecom Project.Under their Optic Fibre programme, 1038 kilometre optic fibre cable has been laid via a subsidy of Rs. 449 million due to which 17 unserved tehsils of Sindh have been connected. Moreover, 77 cities and towns in Southern Telecom Region-I were connected under the Broad-band programme with the help of a subsidy of Rs. 549 million.

The Prime Minister inaugurated local development projects including rehabilitation of a Basic Health Unit (BHU), a primary school, up-gradation of a middle school of girls to high school, repair of bridge at Chak 11, installation of street lights and electric poles and a water filtration plant.
Prime Minister Raja Parvez Ashraf also inaugurated ten classrooms of Commerce Block at Government Degree College Sanghar and an additional 10 rooms at the Government High School Sanghar, which were constructed for Rs 15.046 million and Rs 9.988 million respectively.

China is Now the World’s Largest Market for Smart Devices

China has now overtaken the United States of America in being the biggest market for smart devices like Android and iOS phones and tablets. The market for smart devices in China started growing a year ago and within one year has taken to the first position. Even though, this is the first time that China has overtaken the American market, but it is just with a slight numbers. However, if the Chinese market growth rate remains consistent as it is now, it will take lead with higher numbers.

The report is based on the study by Flurry, which tracked 2.4 billion anonymous application sessions per day from different parts of the world. Having done so, the company claims that they were able to accurately measure activity of 90 percent of the world’s smart devices. Just about a month ago, both China and the U.S. were head-to-head in the market share, but this month in February, China took the lead for the first time.

In January, the U.S. had 222 million active smart devices and China had 221 million, now China is predicted to have 246 million devices and the U.S. increase will take it to 230 million. The third country with the highest number of smart devices is the United Kingdom with 43 million and South Korea is fourth with 40 million active smart devices. The experts who have a keen eye on the trends of the growing smart devices market say that the U.S. will not be able to take back its top spot.

Based merely on the population, the U.S. cannot exceed more than 310 million smart device users. The only country that is predicted to overtake China is India with a population of 1.2 billion people. But that will take some years before we can see India on the top spot as currently there are only 19 million active smart devices in India.