Boosting the power and the price, Samsung hopes to win back customers in the competitive market. The consistent leader in the global smartphone market, the company nonetheless suffered a 22 percent drop in mobile technology sales in the second quarter.

The company blamed the drop in part to disappointing demand for the Galaxy S9, but it also has been pressured by growth in Chinese competitor Huawei.

At a glitzy the launch event in Brooklyn, Samsung unveiled a suite of high tech products, including a smart speaker and watch, and then showed off the new Galaxy Note 9, which will be available for purchase on August 24.

The phone contains a series of improvements but was described by analysts as having no radical new innovations. The latest model boosts memory capacity, and allows customers to play video games such as the popular Fortnite.

Customers will have the option of 128 or 512 gigabytes of memory, and also can insert a micro card to boost capacity beyond a terabyte, a record for a smartphone.

Samsung also enhanced the gadget’s batteries so it can now be used for an entire day without needing to be recharged — a common headache for cell phone users.

Other improvements include tweaks to the device’s “S Pen” feature, which can be used as a remote control for taking pictures or selfies using Bluetooth technology.

And the new model has enough capacity for video games. Samsung has set up a promotion with the popular Fortnite game that lets users download a special mobile version.

According to some trade media sources, the Galaxy Note 9 version with 512 gigabytes will be the most expensive smartphone geared towards the general public.

– Pricey, not radically new –

The price for that model will be $1,250 in the United States, while the 128 gigabyte version will go for $1,000. Apple’s iPhone X in a 256 gigabyte version sells for about $1,150.

Global smartphone sales fell 1.8 percent in the second quarter to 342 million amid market saturation and rising prices, according to tech-industry trackers International Data Corporation.

Avi Greengart, analyst at GlobalData, described the upgrades in the latest Samsung as “iterative,” adding “there is nothing radically new here.”

“It’s a really expensive phone and for people who are looking for a premium Android phone, they may well find it quite appealing,” he said. “But it isn’t likely to get people to consider the Note for the very first time.”

By contrast, Apple’s more dramatic overhaul of the iPhone X design and user interface showed there is a “large group of people who are willing to spend whatever it takes” to upgrade, Greengart said.

Samsung also introduced the Galaxy Watch and the Galaxy Home speaker device, a first for the South Korean company in a market that already contains Amazon’s Echo and Alphabet’s Google Home program.

The company also announced a partnership with streaming music service Spotify to allow “streamless listening” across all Samsung devices, including phones, tablets and smart TVs, as well as the Galaxy Home.

The smart speaker may have a better shot outside the United States, said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

“In the US, Alexa is very entrenched and so is Google Assistant, so it might be a challenge, but not so much in other parts of the world,” Moorhead said.

“Sharing instructions on how to manufacture firearms using 3D printers or CNC milling machines is not allowed under our Community Standards,” a Facebook spokesman said in response to an AFP inquiry.

“In line with our policies, we are removing this content from Facebook.”

The social network added it was working out the range of website links or gun-printing content that will be removed.

Banning blueprints or instructions for 3D-printed guns is in line with the social network’s rules on regulated goods such as firearms, which can only be legally sold or exchanged by licensed dealers.

A US gun rights advocate last week was gearing up for a legal fight to be able to publish online blueprints for 3D-printed firearms, as the White House signaled support for a federal judge’s decision to block the venture.

Cody Wilson’s Texas-based company Defense Distributed had briefly made the blueprints available online, but Seattle-based US District Judge Robert Lasnik granted an injunction to take the material down.

The administration of US President Donald Trump last month gave permission for Wilson to publish the blueprints, but the White House subsequently said the president was unaware of the decision and was glad it was being reviewed.

Eight US states and the District of Columbia sued, arguing the blueprints could allow anyone — from a teen to a “lone wolf” gunman — to make untraceable, undetectable plastic weapons.

Wilson complied with the judge’s order, but put out a call for financial support for the legal battle ahead, including a scheduled August 10 court hearing.

He told CBS News ahead of the injunction that he believes “access to firearms is a fundamental human dignity. It’s a fundamental human right.”

It makes New York the first major US city to limit the number of app-based rides and to impose pay rules, with authorities under pressure to act over pollution and worsening congestion.

The financial capital of 8.5 million is the biggest app-ride market in the United States, where public transport woes and astronomical parking costs have helped fuel years of untamed growth by the likes of Lyft and Uber.

But that growth has brought New York’s iconic yellow cabs to their knees and since December, six yellow-cab drivers have committed suicide.

Those deaths have been linked to desperation over plummeting income. The increased competition has slashed the value of yellow cab taxi licenses from more than $1 million in 2014 to less than $200,000 today.

The bill stipulates a 12-month cap on all new for-hire-vehicle licenses, unless they are wheelchair accessible, as well as minimum pay requirements for app drivers — regulated by the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The TLC, which regulates taxis and is a powerful force in New York politics, commissioned a study recently in a bid to underscore the chaos and push city authorities into taking action.

That report recommended a guaranteed income of $17.22 an hour for drivers — the city’s $15 minimum wage is due to come into effect at the end of 2018 — plus a supplement to mitigate against rest time.

Uber hit back Wednesday, saying the 12-month pause would threaten one of the city’s “few reliable transportation options” — a swipe at a burgeoning subway crisis — “while doing nothing to fix the subways or ease congestion.”

“Uber will do whatever it takes to keep up with growing demand and we will not stop working with city and state leaders… to pass real solutions like comprehensive congestion pricing,” a spokesperson said.

– ‘Workers prevailed’ –

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, vowed to sign the bill into law, claiming that it would “stop the influx of cars contributing to the congestion grinding our streets to a halt.”

“More than 100,000 workers and their families will see an immediate benefit from this legislation,” de Blasio said.

It comes after the city was forced to shelve plans in 2015 to cap the number of vehicles operated by Uber, after the multibillion-dollar corporation fought tooth and nail against the legislation in a slick ad campaign.

The Independent Drivers Guild, which represents more than 65,000 app-based drivers such as those from Lyft and Uber, on Wednesday celebrated.

“Workers and New York leaders made history today. It’s not easy taking on Silicon Valley behemoths, but we kept on fighting for what we know is right and today the workers prevailed,” said executive director Ryan Price.

Most drivers in New York work full time and are often immigrants without higher education. They get into heavy debt to buy their vehicle license and have little other means of generating income.

Around 85 percent earn substantially less than the equivalent of a $15-an-hour minimum wage, according to the TLC-commissioned study.

Around 80,000 drivers work for at least one of the big four app-based companies in New York, compared to 13,500 yellow cab drivers, it found.

Last year, London’s transport authority stripped Uber of its license over safety concerns, but the corporation appealed the decision and was allowed to continue operating while the case was heard.

In June, a British judge overturned the earlier decision and granted the ride-hailing app a 15-month permit.

The charter stands out from traditional channel programs by providing a unique emphasis on partner investments in Nutanix rather than solely on revenue targets, Nutanix said in a press statement.

Further, the charter focuses on empowering Nutanix partners with the tools they need to support their customers in adopting next-generation data center technologies. As a result, partners will gain further avenues to grow their businesses with Nutanix and will be enabled to achieve ongoing, predictable success.

Nutanix first shared the high-level vision of its channel charter during the company’s Partner Xchange event in May. The charter has tiered status with partner status based on number of deals closed and depth of Nutanix skills rather than revenue targets.

According to the press stateent, the new structure enables partners of all sizes to achieve the highest partner category.Categories are defined as the following:

●     Master Partner – Deepest Nutanix partnership and capabilities, where partner is closing the most deals, and holds the most certifications with focused selling on Nutanix’s core HCI products as well as new products such as Flow, Era and Beam

●     Scaler Partner – Growing Nutanix partnership and knowledge, where partner is developing integrated solutions around the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software ecosystem and has increased the number and level of certified staff and deals

●     Pioneer Partner – Initial Nutanix partnership and engagement, where partner is moving first customers to the Nutanix hyperconverged solution and gains initial skills in the Nutanix core products

The Power to the Partner charter is now enhanced with multiple features to help partners guide customers through their digital transformations. These features provide tools and resources to enable partner success aligned to each stage of their customer engagement process, such as:

●     Land – Full service demand-gen platforms and tools to help with acquisition of new customers​

●     Adopt – Resources for partners to run Nutanix demos, Sizer, TCO/ROI, and Xtract tools so partners can deliver rapid, smooth implementations of Nutanix-based solutions ​

●     Expand – Training for products such as Beam, Calm, Flow, Era and new technologies to help existing customers gain more value from their Nutanix environments

●     Renew – The cornerstone for generating recurring revenue, the program provides resources to help Nutanix and partners continue to delight existing customers

Supporting the Power to the Partner charter are rebates and incentives, certifications and training, differentiating marketing tools, and more automated sales support processes.This charter combines the resources of Nutanix with the unique talents of partners to best serve joint customers. Notably, Nutanix recently announced its channel Velocity Program, as one of the first stages of the channel charter in action – providing pre-configured customer offerings and content, as well as unique sales processes and investments – to enable partners to accelerate their success in the mid-market.

“We have seen a fantastic return on investment in our Nutanix resources and activity to date, due to the continually increasing demand by our clients for Nutanix based solutions,” said Tim Jeans, Datacenter & Cloud Practice Manager, Softcat. “We welcome this new channel charter as another sign that Nutanix is investing in committed partners such as ourselves, and look forward to additional growth and success together.”

“We applaud this innovative new channel program designed to help partners of all sizes succeed,” said Dennis Dahl, Chief Revenue Office, Trace3. “As Nutanix grows, it’s important for the company to enable a diverse set of partners who have a track record of skillfully advising their client base to fuel their market adoption. We are excited for this next chapter of growth together with Nutanix.”

“We’re thrilled to launch Nutanix’s very first channel charter that was created directly with our partners in mind,” said Rodney Foreman, Vice President of Global Channel Sales, Nutanix. “As Nutanix’s presence has grown, we see this charter as the stepping stone in our vision to empower our partners with the support and resources they need to reach their maximum potential alongside Nutanix.When our partners are successful, our customers’ businesses can better benefit from simplified and harmonized data centers for all of their cloud needs today and in the future.”

Early endeavors in the channel

In 2006, I joined Red Hat to expand the partner ecosystem. I’d been working in the channel since Moses was around, or at least since 1981. Although we were mainly selling direct, there was growing confidence that we could make the transformation to support a robust partner ecosystem.

At this time we were working with some Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like HP, Dell, and IBM, who were installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on their hardware. In the early years, we also had some equity investors like Intel andSAP who continue to work with us today as partners. So some of our earliest champions have evolved into our longest relationships.

In order to continue to scale, Red Hat needed to work with distributors and resellers. The first call I made was to Peter Larocque, from Synnex, who I’d worked with in the channel for more than 20 years. I introduced him to Red Hat’s upstream open source model, which at the time probably sounded a lot like asking him to get into the business of selling “free” software. He was a little incredulous, but he said he’d give it a try. We had our first distributor partner on board. Six monthslater, we had our first global reseller. Red Hat was on the map in the channel.

Not long after, Red Hat began generating interest in the industry and among prospective partners through acquisitions and new technologies. We had a growing base of partners, technologies and customers who realized their IT partners could work with Red Hat to: provide full solutions for their business needs (Global Systems Integrators and Independent Software Vendors); offer consumption or pay-as-you go models (Service Providers); take them to the cloud (Certified Cloudand Service Providers); and provide industry expertise beyond open source (including healthcare, financial andtelecommunications).

This interest set the stage for the multitiered Red Hat partner program we have today. Our partners solve customer challenges with innovative and supported IT solutions from Red Hat. Partners with their own technologies test and certify their offerings on the Red Hat portfolio of products. Furthermore, we host programs like Red Hat Online Partner Enablement Network (OPEN) to help them succeed.

The role of partners in Red Hat’s success

First and foremost, partners are a major part of our open source community. Many contribute to building the technologies that we deliver to our customers. This is remarkable within the industry, and it really speaks to the open culture of Red Hat.

Also, it’s important to talk about partners when we talk about Red Hat because they’ve helped us become the world’s leading provider of open source solutions. In June, we announced our first quarter earnings for FY19, and we’ve had 65consecutive quarters of revenue growth. For FY18 we attributed 72 percent of our bookings through the channel.

Our strong base of partners has helped Red Hat to reach $2.9 billion in revenue. We hope to continue to grow while supporting our partners to grow and succeed with us.

Partnering into the future

If you attended Red Hat Summit 2018, it’s exciting to see what the future can hold for Red Hat partners. In his keynote, Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s executive vice president and president of Products and Technologies, outlined how collaboration with partners is a key to helping to make hybrid cloud the enterprise default, as highlighted by announcements withMicrosoft and IBM. Our new mission, making IT’s four footprints immaterial, can be achieved with the help of our partners.

In all my years of working with partners, one of the things I’ve seen is that they can change to address their markets and customers, the same as Red Hat. So even as our focus changes, as it often does, Red Hat’s collaboration with our partners is designed to remain constant. That being said, a few areas of current focus include:

●    Emerging open source technologies that are designed to differentiate our partners and solve their customers’ challenges. Partners are already building businesses around Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat Ansible and other offerings.

●    Market expansion opportunities led by partners. We’re providing resources to help partners capture small and medium enterprise customers, and to better address the market in this space.

●    Continued resources, training, and enablement our partners need to help grow their open source business. We’ve launched a new learning management system to help partners obtain accreditation across Red Hat’s technology portfolio. We’re providing partners with an expanded array of sales and marketing content, and we’re working towards a more unified, digital, and mobile-optimized experience.

A message for partners

There is a saying that there are companies with partner organizations and companies that partner; the latter being more successful. We are on this journey to being a company that partners and have come a long way towards it. It is not always easy, but we are focused on making it happen.

The one thing I am most proud of is the patience and loyalty our partners have shown us as we’ve innovated together. They’ve stayed with us as we navigated new technologies and new ways to work together. For that, I am truly humbled and grateful. So if there is one thing I could say to them, it would have to be “thank you.” Together, we’ll continue to help shape the open source industry.

Learn more about the Red Hat partner program.

Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube have all banned Jones, who runs the website Infowars.

“We’re going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories,” Dorsey said in a tweet.

“We know that’s hard for many, but the reason is simple: he hasn’t violated our rules. We’ll enforce if he does.”

In a series of tweets on the subject, Dorsey said Twitter reasoned that it was journalists’ job to shine the light of truth on unsubstantiated rumors or sensationalized issues.

“If we succumb and simply react to outside pressure, rather than straightforward principles we enforce (and evolve) impartially regardless of political viewpoints, we become a service that’s constructed by our personal views that can swing in any direction,” Dorsey tweeted.

“That’s not us.”

Jones has described Monday’s retaliation from an array of Internet giants as a “coordinated communist-style crackdown,” but it followed months of criticism demanding the social media services do more to combat disinformation and hate discourse.

His site Infowars has accused victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting of being “actors” in a plot to discredit the gun lobby.

– Hoaxes and plots –

Facebook said Jones violated its hate speech policies, adding that the pages were taken down for “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

Gunman Adam Lanza killed 26 people, including 20 children at the Connecticut school.

Jones has repeatedly claimed the massacre was a hoax and that the parents of the murdered first graders were actors, an accusation that has sparked death threats against some of the bereaved mothers and fathers.

Among the conspiracy theories Jones has peddled are charges that the US government was behind numerous terrorist attacks, including the September 11, 2001 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Spotify, the streaming music online service, had already removed a number of Jones’s podcasts last week, accusing them of breaking its own hate-speech rules. On Monday, the Swedish company went a step further and banned his program altogether.

Apple removed most of Jones’s podcasts for violating hate speech guidelines.

In late July, YouTube took down videos posted by Jones and suspended him for 90 days.

After Jones sought to skip the suspension by broadcasting live on other YouTube channels, the online video platform said it closed down all of his affiliated channels, which counted some 2.4 million subscribers.

Pinterest also removed the InfoWars account.

Several ultra-conservative websites showed support for Jones, publicly backing his claim that he was a victim of a plot by Big Tech companies.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is raising the cost of digital marketing and presenting a challenge to companies engaged in this field, a digital marketing agency says.

The GDPR, which is aimed at protecting consumers’ privacy on the Internet, affects organisations that have customers in the EU or collect data on people living with the bloc.

It affects digital marketing because it requires people to give their consent to companies to use their information. Digital marketing relies on the use of vast amounts of personal data in order to deliver targeted campaigns.

Mark McDowell, managing director of Primal, a digital marketing agency, said that digital marketers would want to ensure that the data providers that digital marketing companies work with comply with the new regulations.

“GDPR is very good for the industry overall for the long term as it will improve protections for consumer rights,” said McDowell.

He said he always tries to target advertising or content to the right people at the right time with the right message, with the right products and services.

“And having data to do that helps us to correctly achieve that,” he said.

“What is happening right now is that people are downloading apps or subscribing to services from companies without reading the fine print in the terms and conditions, so the change will result in the cost of data increasing because if people do not consent to give their

information, the supply of data will be reduced.

“This means that the costs to obtain quality data will rise. Since the regulations require customers to re-opt-in, the

companies need to notify customers in order to get them to agree to give their consent.”

McDowell said that while the GDPR was announced two years ago, giving people plenty of time to make adjustments, it has only been in recent months that some online providers have swung into action.

The moved quickly to update their privacy policies and consent forms.

McDowell said companies can still take steps to ensure they can protect their businesses with the help of a legal adviser.

He said companies need not be overly worried, as it is not too difficult to ensure compliance with the GDPR.

“When we run campaigns on Facebook, we have the option to take the existing customers’ data, like their names and email addresses, and then upload the details onto Facebook,” said McDowell. “We can then target these people through their information on Facebook. We can also create what we call ‘look alike’ audiences.

“With this, we can take customer profiles and information on their online behaviour and through Facebook data on these people, we can create another audience who behaves online in the same way as existing audiences.

“If these audiences are primarily people from the EU, it means that we potentially have brands that have not obtained consent from these people to do targeted marketing at them on Facebook.

“So, an alternative for us as a digital marketer, is to rely on information drawn from non-behaviour aspects. This is called contextual advertising.”

McDowell said that an example of this could be that if someone is browsing on the Web for cameras, “we want to display ads on the websites that relate to what the website is about, such as a website that has news about cameras”.

“If I am a customer, I can then see ads about cameras related to the pages that we are on.

“This does not involve using the customer’s personal information. It is not about who we are targeting, but rather it is about where and what,” he said.

Coming under the net

Dhiraphol Suwanprateep, the head of the telecommunications, media and technology practice group of Baker Mckenzie’s Bangkok office, said that in the case of the processing of personal data of people in the EU related to the sale of goods or services of Thai companies available in the EU, such companies could be subject to the GDPR. This is also the case for Thai companies that track the behaviour or locations of individuals in the EU.

McDowell said the impact of the GDPR on customer engagement becomes more challenging because such engagement requires an understanding of the touch points of the customer journey before they buy something from a company. People may rely on third party data that they buy to understand or to map the customer journey. It becomes more difficult with the new regulatory regime.

However, because the quality of data should be improved, that information becomes much more actual, McDowell said.

“It may be not amount to much in volume or size, but if the quality improves, we could build more active actuals about their journey and we can reach and engage with them at the different touch points.

“People will see less ‘spray and pray’ advertising.”

Expenditure on digital marketing in Thailand is around US$430 million in 2018, according to KantasTNS Research. The market has an average growth rate of 45 per cent.

But the segment accounts for only 1 per cent of all advertising expenditure, even though digital consumption is very high.

Globally, consumer behaviour is changing, with people spending more time on mobile devices and online generally. Thailand is growing rapidly in terms of the way that people engage.

Thailand has also seen a big shift in TV advertising moving over to digital, because people everyone now has a mobile phone. When they watch TV they also use their phones at the same time. This represents a shift in behaviour.

To address problem of the big gap between digital consumption and digital marketing expenditure, education is required to promote consumer engagement in order to better use marketing investments.

Primal was established two and a half years ago to help Thai brands to grow their presence online through digital media, such as Facebook, Instagram and Google.

“We saw the gap in the market with regard to helping companies and businesses improve the way they engage the customers online.

“We started with four people and have now grown to about 30 people,” said McDowell.

Primal has been growing at about 250 per cent year on year, having customers across 80 brands.

“We do not deal with any offline media. We focus only online media,” McDowell said. “We have different services that can help our customers. We help them to produce content, email marketing, display advertising, SEO, and social media as well as help them to develop websites, We are fully integrated as we handle the entire spectrum.

“Primal’s big focus is on Thailand and Thai consumers because Thai consumer are not like the rest of Asia. They love video, love social media – it is very unique in the way they behave. We integrate different services. We partner with Facebook and Google as well.”

The winning projects, Khon Kaen Smart Health and Phuket Smart Tourism and Living Communities won under the “Public Health and Social Services” and “Tourism, Arts, Libraries, Culture and Open Spaces” categories.

Phuket and Khon Kaen were 19 out of 148 most outstanding smart-city projects in APeJ initiated by the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA). Both the winning projects illustrated the best practices of urban innovation with ultimate focus on the use of technologies (cloud, platforms, analytics, Internet of Things, mobile solutions) and data, unique partnerships, funding models and/or community involvement, IDC said.

The Khon Kean Smart Health project is a DEPA initiative with local healthcare service providers and universities, that has three components.

The first is a smart ambulance that utilises teleconference, IoT, and robotics technology to increase emergency dispatch operation efficiency and allows healthcare professionals to perform initial diagnostic work and emergency treatment before the patients arrive at hospitals.

The second is the preventive healthcare service leveraging smart wristbands and smart home solutions to monitor and collect citizens’ health data and provide health guidance accordingly.

The third is still being developed. It uses blockchain and big data analytics to develop a medical data-sharing platform that can be accessed by both public and private healthcare service providers.

The Phuket Smart Tourism and Living Communities project is a joint initiative of DEPA and the Ministry of Digital Economy, in partnership with various government agencies, Prince of Songkla University and Phuket City Development to ensure sustainable tourism and safety in the city.

Components of this project include smart tourism, public safety, smart environment, and smart government. Smart tourism is deploying citywide free high-speed Wi-Fi, Phuket Smart City application, and smart wristbands for tourists. Public safety is ensured by deploying CCTV cameras with analytics capabilities including licence plate and facial recognition, and vessel-tracking system. Smart environment deploys waste-water management system that utilise IoT technology. And, smart government is creating a city data platform to provide real-time city data to support decision-making.

Gaining momentum

Jarit Sidhu, head of operations at IDC Thailand said that as smart-city transformation is on in full swing in the Asia Pacific region with major economic, social and environmental implications, collaboration at all levels from the governmental agencies to the grassroots citizens is necessary. The DEPA has validated its potential of carrying out smart-city transformation and leveraged emerging technologies and innovation to make cities more liveable and the residents forward-looking.