Souq.com has a daily deals section that sends out a newsletter to it’s subscribers every morning highlighting some of the deals they have going on their website. At times, there are some pretty good deals that are almost impossible to secure due to limited availability of stock which I can live with. But it’s when they try and fool their potential customer is what ticks me off. Here is the screenshot for the email that was sent out today.

As you can see, they are selling the new iPad at a pretty decent price of AED 1,969. However, look at the retail price and discount level on that deal. As per souq.com, the retail price is AED 2,999 and you’re saving a whopping 35% making it a really good deal.

Now head over to http://www.apple.com/ae/ipad/, the site of a company called Apple that actually MAKES these tablets. And look the pricing on their website TODAY. It clearly states AED 1,999. Considering that Apple is the manufacturer of the iPad, I believe they are pretty much the authority when deciding what the the retail price of their product should be and they have chosen to list it at AED 1,999 and not 2,999 that souq.com is claiming to be the retail price. So although souq.com has a lower price, it is definitely NOT saving you 35% off the retail price. It’s actually less than 2% savings.

While I have highlighted souq.com in this particular example, sadly this is the state of many retailers across the UAE. They assume their customer is an idiot and try and take advantage of it. IMHO, that is definitely not the best way of growing a business. Folks, try and be honest- mention the fact that you are selling a product below the retail price and passing savings off to your customer. But don’t blatantly lie on what a fantastic deal you are offering.

Ok, so you’re all packed and about to go for a holiday. Comfortable shoes? Check. iPod? Check. Sun glasses? Check. Trusted Blackberry and charger? Check. Camera? Wait…isn’t your phone good enough to capture your precious memories? I think not. Let me tell you why you need a digital camera and why the camera on the back of your phone is just not good enough.

But firstly, what is a digital camera? It’s a device that captures or records still or moving subjects and stores the memories for later viewing on a digital medium such as a memory card. So wouldn’t you be happy if the memories are captured in higher quality so that when you play back your photos or videos, you can truly relive the moment?

The best picture quality comes from the best combination of lens, engine, and sensor. These three elements are crucial to any digital camera and in capturing the best possible image. So why do you need that camera, again?

Well, firstly the sensor in your still camera is around nine times larger than the sensor on your mobile, which means much more light falls onto the sensor. Generally speaking, the larger the sensor, the better the likely hood of getting clearer stills and videos, even in low light conditions.

What about the lens? The lens on a mobile phone is way too small and does not have the aspherical coating to give you distortion-free images. Sounds a bit technical, but again the better the lens, the better the image, which means straight lines appear straight and the color reproduction is faithful to the actual color of the object. And with features like image stabilization, you can ensure you get blur free images and sharp, bounce-free videos, even if shot while you were walking.

When it comes to expressing your creativity these days, mobile phones – particularly the smartphones – are equipped with quite a few art filters or apps so that photos of objects can be made to look interesting. However, you still cannot beat the clarity and the capability of your still camera. Shoot a photo in RAW format, and you have complete flexibility to change the image to your liking, which you just can’t do with an image shot by a mobile phone. What’s more is that if you are traveling and you want to capture photos or videos of distant objects, your mobile phone with limited digital zoom capabilities will be beaten hands down by your friend’s camera with an optical zoom lens. These days very compact cameras offer extremely high zoom ratios so you are never too far from the subject you want to shoot.

Ok, so let’s say you are still not convinced. The main reason to have your phone with you is to get in touch with people and communicate, right? So imagine you are out in the wilderness with your phone battery flat out and no way to capture the scenic sunset. Wouldn’t you be better off had you carried your camera with you? I don’t want to say it, but it sounds like an ‘I told you so’ moment. Or what about when you see your favorite celebrity, the burst shooting mode on your camera will allow you to show off your professional side by capturing multiple images in a short period of time, ensuring that there is at least one image that captured the moment in all its glory. But because your phone can’t shoot in burst mode (with the exception of very new models) you may end up not being able to take the photo in time. Once again, your digital camera comes out on top.

For picture quality, clarity and detail, the digital camera is your best friend for your holiday – the tiny camera at the back of your mobile phone may be good, but it’s just not good enough.

Happy Holidays!

The message was clear to all attendees of BlackBerry World 2012- RIM’s annual gathering of employees, partners, developers and media. BlackBerry 10 will deliver all that it’s promised to deliver and on time, this time around, which is set for the later part of this year. RIM’s recent CEO Thorsten Heins took stage and showed us a tiny glimpse of what is expected out of the new OS and I must say that I walked away impressed by what little he showed.

Just a few days back, I had written an article on what RIM needs to show us with the BlackBerry 10 platform so lets find out how well RIM did. Let’s start with the official video clip posted by RIM on their YouTube channel that shows some of the features of the BlackBerry 10.

Impressive right? Now let’s tackle the questions I had put forth and find out what was answered.

Gorgeous UI that is different

I’ll give RIM a thumbs up on this one. The UI is extremely stylish and from what little I saw, different that iOS and Android. The task switching pane reminds me of Meego found on Nokia’s N9 whereas swipes and rounded-corners for applications take a page out of Palm’s WebOS. We still don’t know what the main/home screen will look like but I certainly like the flow of applications.

Smooth and Snappy

One of the things that Thorsten mentioned in an interview session with the press is the thing he was most excited about was how smooth and snappy BlackBerry 10 is shaping up to be- no more hourglasses or lags. The video and the live demonstration of the unit showed it to be fairly capable and with the rest of the year left to optimize, I am going to give RIM a thumbs up on this as well.

Social Integration

The start of the video shows the Universal Inbox that BlackBerry is famous for and the Accounts tab selected at the bottom so expect the same Social integration that is part of PlayBook and hopefully some more. With Gist as a part of RIM now, I think this will be a no-brainer so another thumbs up for RIM

Great Camera

While the quality/specs of the camera were not revealed, what was revealed was the application that looked very much like what we saw from Scalado at Qualcomm’s iQ event. Here is a video of Scalado demonstrating exactly what we saw at the keynote

RIM confirmed that they have indeed licensed the technology from Scalado in a statement posted at TechCruch.

RIM has been working with Scalado on camera technology and has licensed some of the Scalado technology for the BlackBerry 10 platform. As shown during the BlackBerry World Keynote, RIM is planning a unique implementation of the technology on BlackBerry 10 to provide an incredible user experience, allowing for more customization by the user and enabling them to easily capture and share their perfect moments.

This means good things, and I’m pretty sure that RIM will pair the incredible software with the hardware it deserves. So another thumbs up.

Apps, Apps and More Apps

There were close to five thousand people that attended BlackBerry World 2012 and a good number of them were developers- each of whom is going home with a BlackBerry 10 Alpha Dev device. This will certainly give RIM a lot of traction by the time their OS is released and allow for a fairly featured App World at launch.

However, we did not hear about any partnerships with big companies like Skype/Microsoft or Amazon/Kindle. For RIM to succeed with BlackBerry 10, they need to get the heavy-weights behind them as no matter how good of a platform they build, Apps are what matters to end-users and the lack of popular apps will make the general user turn away.

The Keyboard

In closing, I mentioned that RIM will not abandon a hardware keyboard as that is one of their primary strengths and Thorsten confirmed that they will launch a BlackBerry 10 device with a hardware keyboard. That being said, the innovation that RIM is bringing to soft-keyboards was one of the highlights of the videos you saw above and probably the feature that impressed me the most about BlackBerry 10. Swiping up to complete works and back to delete them makes using a soft keyboard with one-hand extremely impressive.

In closing, Thorsten mentioned that there are plenty of surprises that RIM has yet to show with BlackBerry 10 and considering that the devices are still a good quarter or two away, I can understand that he did not want to give the competition any more ideas by showcasing what else they have.

Of course the biggest challenge for RIM is making sure they survive the next few months by the time BlackBerry 10 is released. While things are looking good for them in the Middle East, other parts of Asia and South America, they are losing share in the US market which tends to produces the most vocal critics.

While Sony and Nintendo are quite concerned about Apple taking a big chunk of the portable gaming market, I think they should be more worried on the non-portable side of gaming. Currently, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are enjoying a large base of hard core gamers but think about this for a second – what’s stopping Apple from entering and eating this market?

Let’s start with the hardware. The new iPad with its quad core GPU is already capable of powering a display that is even higher in resolution than a full HD display. So it is safe to say that that the next version of Apple’s SoC, the A6, will be a fairly capable piece of silicon that should be able to deliver at least the same quality of games that the 7 year old Xbox 360 and 6 year old PS3 currently do. Apple is already using a cut-down version of the A5 CPU on Apple TV so upgrading to a full A6 SoC on the next version of ATV won’t be much of an issue.

The next thing Apple needs is a gaming controller which they obviously don’t have at the moment. However, one of the articles from Anandtech suggested that Apple is indeed working on a gaming controller for iOS. While many people might start thinking in the direction of an iPad or iPhone, remember Apple TV is also based on iOS. Apple can easily utilize Bluetooth for pairing up the controller to Apple TV- maybe even use the latest low powered 4.0 standard already present on the iPhone 4S.

Last and certainly not the least, you need a gaming ecosystem. Guess what? You already have that in the form of App Store- much like Microsoft has Xbox Live and Sony has SEN. Games like Infinity Blade and Epoch are pushing non-casual gaming on the iOS further and further and with studios like EA and Ubisoft, Apple already has support from the gaming industry. In fact, there are rumors of Blizzard entering the iOS market; and then a supposed visit by Tim Cook to Valve adds fuel to the fire, even though Gabe Newell denied it.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who can see all the pieces of the puzzle coming together. At $99, the Apple TV is even more affordable than a $160 Nintendo Wii and becomes an impulse purchase. Games on the App Store are also much cheaper than their console counterparts- yes, I know they are cut-down or alternate versions but last-year devices can play games like Max Payne so imagine what next year’s silicon will bring?

So don’t be surprised if Apple repositions the Apple TV as not just a multi-media player but also a full blown system capable of playing games that are as good as the current-gen consoles games.

The BlackBerry World 2012 event is barely ten days away and I am expecting RIM’s CEO, Mr. Thorsten Heins to showcase their new BlackBerry 10 OS for the first time during his keynote address. This is a big deal for RIM and pretty much the defining moment for their transition period. If they impress, they have a chance of making a comeback but if they disappoint, it might as well be game-over for them. Here is a list of five things that RIM needs to make sure they nail with the upcoming BB10 OS.

Gorgeous UI that is different

RIM needs to make sure that BB10 does not necessarily look like iOS or Android. Microsoft got it right with Windows and tiles- it’s different, beautiful and getting there in terms of functionality. With the acquisition of TAT a year or so back, I think RIM has had enough time to create a stunning UI because these guys are really good. Check out their concept video from some time back. That is the first thing that the end user will notice and this experience needs to be flawless.

Smooth and Snappy

One of the thing that irritates the hell out of me is the lag in Android- even when you’re using the fastest quad-core CPU. During transitions, switching apps or even working within apps, you can randomly see pauses in Android which is annoying. That does not exist in iOS or Windows Phone- at least not to the degree of being noticeable and irritating. RIM needs to make sure that BB10 is butter smooth.

Social Integration

Social media is where it’s at nowadays and looking at PlayBook OS2, you can tell that it will very much be integrated into the core of BB10. In fact, even the current generation of BlackBerry Smartphones have a decent Social integration but BB10 will need to the biggest Super App that RIM has created. Hopefully with Gist and Tungle.me as their recent acquisitions, I’m hoping this should not be something hard for them to implement.

Great Camera

BlackBerry has not really been known as a device that is marvelled for the camera quality and this needs to change with new BB devices. With competition from the likes of HTC, Apple and Nokia, RIM seriously needs to step up their game and have a phenomenal camera that not only takes incredible pictures but takes them real fast.

Apps, Apps and more Apps

As much as I like Windows Phone from Microsoft it’s a bit sad to see apps like BoxFiles as a replacement to dropbox and Pinspiration as a replacement for an official Pintrest client. RIM needs to excite developers to build first-hand applications on BB10. Apps like Skype, Pintrest, Kindle and Instagram need official clients on BB10 devices at launch along with games like Words with Friends and Drawesome. This is what attracts an end-user to your platform and no matter how slick your OS is, if it doesn’t have the apps, it will not fly. Microsoft’s Windows Phone is a prime example of this.

These are the five things that I think RIM really needs to work at with BB10. Of course having a killer device to showcase all of this helps. Considering how the portrait-oriented full touch devices are the standard form factors nowadays, I don’t think we’ll see a Bold kind of device as a launch device for the BB10 platform. That might happen a little later but my guess is that you’ll probably see a full touch Torch 9860 kind of device or maybe the older Torch 9800/9810 as a slider and a full keyboard. Something like the concept device we posted.

There has been a lot of talk on whether RIM should exit the consumer market and focus purely on the enterprise- a segment that they are really good at. While it’s true that RIM’s market share in consumer devices has globally been shrinking, it is still the best messaging device out there.

It’s no secret that I’ve been an advocate of BlackBerry Smartphones for a while and yes, I feel the pain of users who are envious of the slick UI and Apps that the iPhone and Android devices sport. So like most users in the UAE, I carry two phones with me and one of them is always the BlackBerry. The other phone keeps switching between an iPhone and whatever device that I am currently reviewing but the BlackBerry is a constant.

The reason I do that is because, as I mentioned in the intro, nothing comes close to being as good of a messaging device as a BlackBerry. The keyboard on RIM’s devices are insanely good and come in very handy, especially in a non-English speaking world where you mix and match words from multiple languages. Even my two year old iPhone doesn’t always get it right with auto-correction and no matter what one says, a full hardware keyboard continues to offers the best typing experience.

There is no denying that RIM is awesome on the enterprise-side, especially with their compression and security which not only helps careers utilize less bandwidth but also makes your device less expensive to use (through data charges) and makes the battery last longer due to lesser usage. That kind of technology would be incredible on an iPhone- especially if you add BBM to that mix, but do keep in mind that the reason that Apple does so well is because their control the entire software and hardware aspect of their products. RIM needs to continue doing the same.

So I don’t think RIM should exit the consumer device space. Their numbers might be shrinking in the rest of the world but they are doing really well in the Middle East where BBM has replaced text messaging for most. For a slick UI and apps, we need to wait for RIM to release the BlackBerry 10 OS and hope that they really hit one out of the park. And make a device that looks like the concept picture posted on top. I still have faith.

Recently, Gulf News posted a report citing Gartner on the Smartphone market in the Middle East where Nokia was shown leading the race with Samsung coming in at a distant second followed by RIM, iPhone and the rest of the Android devices. Here is the infographic showing the overall picture.

Any one who has been in the industry for a while can take one look at that graph and be able to tell you that something doesn’t look quite right. According to that graph, every other Smartphone user in the region uses a Nokia. Now honestly tell me, when was the last time you saw someone with a Nokia Smartphone? Next thing you see is that although Nokia’s share has merely fallen from 58% to 53%, Symbian OS usage fell a whopping 46%- from 85% to 39%.

Based on the above two numbers, I believe Gartner is also counting feature phones in this survey and not just Smartphones as the title suggests. If you read the Gulf News article, you will notice that the Nokia Asha is mentioned in there which, technically, is a feature phone. If Gartner is looking at the Smartphone + Feature phone market, then those stats above make a lot of sense as almost everyone buying a budget phone choses a Nokia or a Samsung.

I would love to see stats based purely on the Smartphone segment in the Middle East. If I was to guess, RIM would be leading that report followed by iPhone on the handset side and possibly Android on the OS side. Nokia would be all the way down and Symbian usage would be negligible. Now don’t think that I have no love for Nokia- as a matter of fact, their Lumia 800 device is superb and although Windows Phone is not quite there yet, I can easily see it becoming a force to recon with by 2013/2014.

When I posted up the article about Google Glasses, a part of my mind went “This is so horribly wrong”.

Think about it – you’re walking down the street minding your own business when out of the corner of your eye you get a notification that you’ve got new email. You dismiss it and seconds later you get a text message from your friend asking you if you’ve seen their email. By this point your left hand starts vibrating to remind you about the doctor’s appointment you have in fifteen minutes. Oh look – another notification that there’s a special offer if you check-in to the coffee shop across the street. Except you’re so busy trying to dictate a witty check-in comment that you don’t notice that the pedestrian crossing light has actually turned red. Can you picture what happens next?

We are bombarded by notifications and technology every day. My Blackberry buzzes when I get a new email. TweetDeck pops up on my laptop when someone mentions me. My iPad lights up when someone sends me a message on MSN Messenger. My iPod dings when someone likes something on my Facebook. Every day we battle against a tidal wave of notification sounds and messages that aim to make our lives easier but in fact just get in the way. Gadgets like Google Glasses may seem cool and trendy, but you know there are going to be ridiculous casualties from hair-brained people paying more attention to their HUD than to real life. It’s bad enough that people walk about poring over the phones that they collide right into you (or fall into a fountain), so can you imagine the chaos if everyone is equipped with a pair of these glasses?

What we do need are less notifications. Less apps that scream out “GIVE ME ATTENTION NOW!”. Devices that only notify us when we need them to, not every fourteen seconds. Of course, you could just do the simple thing and turn off all notifications which is what I’ve done, but then do you start to get notification cravings? I turned off the blinking new email notification LED on my Blackberry, and I kid you not my mind started imagining the red dot lighting up so every time I looked at my phone I’d think there was an email or something else to check. That clearly can’t be healthy thinking.

So before you start saving up for a pair of Google Glasses, think about the reprecussions of having yet another gadget in your life that’s vying for your attention. And as the video below demonstrates, it’s not always pretty.

As grand as it may sound, Apple’s new iPad is a game changer and it is all about pixels. Sure, a better camera is nice as is quad core graphics. But undoubtedly the star of the new iPad is the retina display. I suspect it will also be the one thing in the new iPad that will take the iPad-line into the future.

I’m actually writing this on the new iPad connected to a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display and an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. There is a SD card adapter as well as USB adapter laying on the desk, completing the setup. It is truly amazing what I can accomplish with this gear.

It offers probably 90% or more of the functionality of a Mac, and that remaining 10% I don’t need all the time. In addition it offers some clear benefits over a Mac, like all day battery life and portability that not even the smallest MacBook can match.

Sure, I can’t expand the storage, but with access to a 50 GB online DropBox I’m not sure it matters much. And by SSH-ing into a virtual server I have access to the full flexibility and power of a Linux server right from the comfort and convenience of my iPad. Finally, when I need something that doesn’t run on the iPad, like access a website that requires Flash, I can remotely connect to my office Mac and do what I need to do.

But back to the issue of pixels. I’m not sure I can adequately explain just how gorgeous the 2,048 by 1,536 pixel display is. It’s a miracle that so many pixels have been packed into an area as small as just 9.7 inches.

Since the pixels are so small, text looks crisp, photos look amazing, and apps – at least if they’re developed for the retina display – look supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

I truly can’t make out individual pixels and that’s a first for me I think. Even on the 23-inch Cinema Display it all looks very smooth and crisp at the same time.

So what about competitors?

I don’t see any coming anytime soon. Even if there would be an Android tablet, for example, launched soon, there will not be many apps for a very long time. Just look at the meager selection of Honeycomb apps in Google Play now. This is one area where Apple’s advantage is even bigger than it is when it comes to the hardware and software of the device itself.

So even if you have no intention of ever buying an iPad, you just simply have to experience one.

At first glance it may seem like Apple didn’t do much to update the new iPad compared to the previous generation.

However, that would be missing what’s staring you right in the face – or not as it may be – that the new iPad is the first device that will make us forget about pixels.

And that makes it a game changer, one that even Steve Jobs would have been proud of.

Photo courtesy of Emran Kassim.

Times sure have changed. Last year around this time when the iPad 2 was released, retailers were having a blast selling the tablet for about twice as much as it costs in the US. And I’m not just talking about those small booths at shopping malls that like to rip tourists off- some of the bigger power retailers were also as shameless about making a quick buck as these small time stores. This morning, I got an email from souq.com that is selling the base 16GB unit for AED 2,049 while the unit I purchased from US- 32GB with 4G is selling for AED 2,949. My credit card statement shows that I paid AED 3,032 for that same unit in the US.

Taking the example of the base 16GB unit I mentioned above for AED 2,049, that same 16GB iPad 2 was selling for as high as AED 5,300 last year. I can only imagine the rage that Steve Jobs would have exhibited when he would have found that out these resellers were making a bigger profit than Apple on each iPad that was sold. Apple needed to fix this problem as I’m sure many official distributors in regions such as ours must have raised their concerns and frustration. I remember iStyle had announced last year that it  will not be providing service to grey-imported units of the iPad 2.

So what was causing the iPad 2 to fetch such a premium over it’s base price? Yes, it is a wonderful device but that was not the reason for it. It’s all about economics- supply and demand. While Apple must have estimated demand for the iPad for every official market that it was released into, it probably did not take into consideration the demand that would be created due to grey imports. The iPad is, after all, a very sought after item and in many parts of the world, people don’t want to wait to get one.

So Apple made sure it produced enough units of the new iPad to not only cater to all the official markets the new iPad was released into, but also enough so that the grey-importers don’t make a killing on it. As per Apple, they sold three million units of the new iPad in the first three days and while Apple didn’t release the sales figures for the iPad 2′s first few days of sales, it is estimated that it took Apple three weeks to reach that figure.

Thus, it’s no surprise that the new iPad is not fetching the premiums it’s predecessor commanded because Apple has nipped the problem that created the scenario for such premiums. Great news for consumers but not so much for retailers that forecast the hike of their profits around the launch of Apple products.