Azmalo.pk: A Rising Online Marketplace in Pakistan

Customers’ buying behaviours have changed significantly in the last decade. A lot of focus is now towards good deals and convenience in shopping. This trend has resulted in many online shopping websites worldwide and Pakistan too is catching up fast.

Azmalo.pk is the latest one to join the bandwagon. This online marketplace has been developed by the German online venture builder, Rocket Internet, which has presence in more than 40 countries. Rocket Internet has successfully emulated and launched e-commerce websites — similar to the likes of Azmalo.pk — globally.

By functions, Azmalo is a marketplace where everyone is welcome to buy and sell products. In addition, Azmalo is working with businesses whose products and prices are market competitive. Azmalo tries to get the best deals on products from its trusted sellers.

As an online marketplace, Azmalo allows individuals and businesses to buy and sell various goods, such as fashion apparel, computers, electronics, books, home appliances and mobile phones online and have them delivered directly to the buyers through efficient courier services. With convenient services such as cash-on-delivery, Azmalo aims to provide a reliable and trusted platform for online shopping in Pakistan.

Azmlalo says that the expertise and experience derived from launching a multitude of online ventures across the globe has enabled it to have a strong competitive edge over its competitors.

Azmalo.pk

Azmalo focuses on customer care and provides the most convenient forum for shopping in Pakistan. With a live customer chat service on the website and a highly efficient customer service department, Azmalo strives to have satisfied and happy customers. With the masses being generally unaware and wary of online shopping, this service aims to build trust amongst customers by answering their queries at point of purchase.

Home delivery and cash on delivery are added services which convince the consumers to buy online; the aspect of online shopping being ‘hassle-free’ and ‘convenient’ is ultimately what Azmalo aims to promote for the general public.

Azmalo has over 19,000 listings, more than 2000 successfully completed orders and ever-growing list of customers who rave about the portal.

Azmalo is lead by Ahmad Khan, who is the CEO/Founder. His previous career includes working at renowned organizations such as Mckinsey, P&G. He was also one of the founders for the successful online fashion venture Daraz.pk, which is a venture of Rocket Internet as well.

To check out the latest goods and deals on Azmalo, visit www.Azmalo.pk

Nokia to Start Mid-Range Lumia Smartphone Sales in Walmart

Lumia 

Nokia is expected to get a boost to its smartphone sales later this month when it starts selling its mid-range Windows Phone based device, the Lumia 521 in the USA's largest retailer, Walmart.

The handset is expected to go on sale for under US$150, with a T-Mobile tariff, making it a very competitively priced option in the smartphone market.

"There is an opportunity for us to offer a very high quality device in the mainstream," Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft's Windows Phone unit told the Reuters news agency. "That's where we've made progress in the last couple of months and it's a strategy we'll continue to explore in the United States."

The LTE enabled Lumia 521 -- which is the US variant of the Lumia 520 -- went on sale on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) last week, where it has already sold out.

The phone is being pitched as a mid-range model, with the latest Windows Phone OS, and a 4-inch screen and 5-megapixel camera.

The company has struggled to break into the market with the major mobile networks, who subsidise the top-end handsets from Samsung and Apple. The company is hoping that the deal with T-Mobile for an unsubsidized handset, but lower monthly tariff will help it break that logjam.

Ufone Starts Accepting Pre-Orders for Samsung Galaxy S4

Ufone today started accepting pre-orders for Samsung Galaxy S4 in Pakistan.

Ufone had announced earlier this week to co-launch Samsung Galaxy S4 in Pakistan, after which it is now accepting pre-orders for Samsung’s next flagship device.

Ufone customers can pre-order Galaxy S4 on Ufone’s website here or at selected customer service centres.

It is anticipated that Samsung Galaxy S4 will be available in Pakistan from May 5th, 2013 as Ufone has said that it will call customers after May 5th, 2013 regarding the availability of the phone.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Price:

• While Ufone hasn’t confirmed the price officially, it is believed that Samsung Galaxy S4 will cost around Rs. 70,000 to 72,000
• First 200 orders will be given Original Flip Cover (worth Rs. 2,500) for free
• Those who will buy Samsung Galaxy S4 from Ufone will be given following bundles for free:
• unlimited On-Net minutes for one month,
• unlimited SMS for one month
• unlimited mobile Internet for one month

Terms & Conditions:

• Fair usage policy of 6000 Ufone to Ufone minutes, 9000 SMS and 1.5GB Internet data applies
• This offer is valid for 1 month only
• Terms and Conditions apply
• 19.5% FED on usage and other taxes on recharge or bill apply.
• Using SIMs without proper documentation is a crime – PTA
• Pre-booking is only taking place at Ufone Customer Service Centres in Karachi, Lahore & Islamabad.

Why and How Firefox OS is Better than Android and iOS?

Before explaining anything about Firefox OS, I want to discuss few limitations of Android and iOS platforms.

What Happened to Android and iOS?

You maybe wondering why a new mobile OS? Isn’t Android and iOS enough to meet our needs? The reality is there’s always room for improvement and innovation even in saturated markets like mobile operating system. There are many problems that are needed to be fixed in both operating systems. Following are few of the problems:

• Both Android and iOS are resource hungry. To have best experience with them, you need high end phone.
• High end phones are not affordable by everyone. So you can say they are designed for rich people.
• Resource hungry also means consuming more battery. They don’t have good battery life.
• Your phone is not upgradable to every new release of Android or iOS. Just because with every new release, you need a higher specs device to run it smoothly. So after few releases you are out of scene!
• Left behind on older versions means you can’t run new version of apps because they require you to upgrade to particular version of the OS.
• You are forced to download apps only from their marketplaces. Only Apple and Google are making money from this. What about network operators? What if someone like us want to build their own marketplace?

What’s Firefox OS

Firefox OS is 100% open source HTML5 based mobile OS developed by Mozilla Foundation (non-profit organization). The idea behind it is to make web as the native platform for mobile. Every app in it is developed using HTML5 including the Home Screen, Phone Dialer, SMS, Contacts, everything you see on the screen is developed using HTML5.

In Firefox OS, only browser engine runs above the kernel and device drivers and all apps are executed by that browser engine. Think this way. You have an OS which runs only a browser engine and that browser engine runs all the apps.

Problems that Firefox OS Solves?

Because of this architectural design, Firefox OS consume very less resources. Consuming less resources means many things.

1. It can run smoothly on low-end devices.
2. Of course low and mid range phones are less expensive than the high-end phones. So you can say Firefox OS hardware will be much cheaper than Android and iOS. Everyone can afford it easily.
3. Firefox OS devices will have much longer battery life because of less resource consumption.

Few other problems that Firefox OS solves.

1. Your phone never gets obsolete because web is the native platform. New version of apps will run easily even on your older hardware
2. You are not forced to download apps from Mozilla’s market place. You can add any web app on the internet as native app if the developer has added a small manifest file in the root dir of that app. You can even create your own market place.
3. Imagine a word in your mind and try searching it in App Discovery interface of Firefox OS, it will give you high quality chosen apps from all over the internet. This truly unlocks the power of web on mobile.

Firefox Apps:

Many of you will argue that Android and iOS are superior because of the ecosystem and the magnitude and quality of apps they offer. Well, I do agree that Firefox isn’t anywhere in the radar yet. But look at the openness of the platform and the potential apps for Firefox platform. It may take some time but ultimately Firefox will be placed best to beat the competition.

Not to forget Linux, which always struggled with Windows in terms of applications – but it is still one of the top competitors of Microsoft’s Windows.

Can I Buy Firefox OS Phone?

Firefox OS will see the light of the day in summer this year and Mozilla’s initial target is to launch the OS for low-end devices in developing countries, specifically the Latin America and few European countries. The only devices that are available now are Keon and Peak. Both of these devices are developer preview phones and manufactured by Spanish startup Geeksphone and the good news is that they are shipping them worldwide.

Keon is priced at 91 Euro (12,000 PKR) and Peak at 149 Euro (20,000 PKR). Just to mention that entire stock of these devices was sold out in just few hours after the launch. But Geeksphone promised to bring them back as soon as possible on thereonline store.

Other brands who will manufacture Firefox phones are Alcatel, Huawei, LG, Sony, and ZTE. Few months ago, Sony released Firefox OS experimental ROM for Xperia E. Alcatel and ZTE are targeting extremely low-end phones. You can check the demo of Firefox OS running on ZTE Open. ZTE Open has 256MB of RAM and 1GHz single core processor but still you can see from the demo how smooth it’s running on such low spec phone.

You maybe wondering why Samsung is not manufacturing Firefox OS phones. Actually they are developing their own OS called Tizen. Maybe at the end of this year or next year, you will see Tizen devices in market from Samsung too.

Why Support Mozilla?

Mozilla is non-profit and I fully support their philosophy of Open Web. About 50% of their source code is written by volunteers. Not only there products are open but also every single web page of there products is open. They have always promoted open technologies and never did anything bad to create monopoly.

Mozilla also won the Most Trusted Internet Company in Privacy award. Do you really believe in Google, Apple, Facebook or Microsoft in same way? I don’t!

Thanks to Mozilla and all the volunteers who worked hard to keep the mobile platform open and promoting use of open technologies to develop mobile apps.

Samsung Announces the New Galaxy Tab 3.0

Samsung has added a new tablet to its ever-growing line-up of Android devices, this time the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. The tablet has a 7 inch display and runs on a dual-core processor. It follows the same design language (and the build materials) as the current Galaxy products.

The tablet is by all means meant to be a mid-range offering. Its 7 inch display is of WSVGA resolution i.e. 600 x 1024 pixels. And judging by the screen size, it’s a Nexus 7 competitor.

As expected, it follows the footsteps of the current Galaxy line-up of devices by featuring virtually the same design as nearly all of them. That too is not necessarily a bad thing but haters won’t find the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 adorable either.

Under the hood, the tablet runs on a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor along with 1GB of RAM. There will be 8 or 16GB internal storage options, expandable via a microSD card slot.

On the software side of things, the tablet runs on Android 4.1, which is not exactly the latest but is not exactly a bad thing to have. And of course, all the famous Samsung apps come along with the tablet too.

Here are the full specifications of the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0.

• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean customized with Nature UI
• 7 inch display with resolution of 600 x 1024 pixels
• Weight: 306g
• 9.9mm thick
• Optional 3G version with voice call functionality
• 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM with 8/16 GB internal expandable storage
• 3.15 megapixel back camera with 720p HD video recording
• 1.3 megapixel front-camera
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth 3.0, dual-band Wifi, Wifi Hotspot
• 4000 mAh battery

There will be a 3G version of this tablet with voice call functionality too. The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 will be available in May but pricing details are unknown as of now.