THE WONDER STUFF THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD: GRAPHENE IS SO STRONG A SHEET OF IT AS THIN AS CLINGFILM COULD SUPPORT AN ELEPHANT

GRAPHENE:

WHICH IS FORMED OF HONEY COMB PATTERN OF CARBON ATOMS,COULD BE THE MOST IMPORTANT NEW MATERIAL FOR A CENTURY

IT IS TOUGHER THAN DIAMOND,BUT STRETCHES LIKE RUBBER. IT IS VIRTUALLY INVISIBLE,CONDUCTS ELECTRICITY AND HEAT BETTER THAN ANY COPPER WIRE WEIGHS NEXT TO NOTHING.

Meet graphene — an astonishing new material which could revolutionise almost every part of our lives.

Some researchers claim it’s the most important substance to be created since the first synthetic plastic more than 100 years ago.

If it lives up to its promise, it could lead to mobile phones that you roll up and put behind your ear, high definition televisions as thin as wallpaper, and bendy electronic newspapers that readers could fold away into a tiny square.

It could transform medicine, and replace silicon as the raw material used to make computer chips.

The ‘miracle material’ was discovered in Britain just seven years ago, and the buzz around it is extraordinary.

Last year, it won two Manchester University scientists the Nobel Prize for physics, and this week Chancellor George Osborne pledged £50 million towards developing technologies based on the super-strong substance.

In terms of its economics, one of the most exciting parts of the graphene story is its cost. Normally when scientists develop a new wonder material, the price is eye-wateringly high.

But graphene is made by chemically processing graphite — the cheap material in the ‘lead’ of pencils. Every few months researchers come up with new, cheaper ways of mass producing graphene, so that some experts believe it could eventually cost less than £4 per pound.

But is graphene really the wonder stuff of the 21st century?

For a material with so much promise, it has an incredibly simple chemical structure. A sheet of graphene is just a single layer of carbon atoms, locked together in a strongly-bonded honeycomb pattern.

Pledge: George Osborne, pictured visiting the University of Manchester lab where graphene is being researched, has said £50m will be set aside to help with development of technologies based on the susbstance

That makes it the thinnest material ever made. You would need to stack three million graphene sheets on top of each other to get a pile one milimetre high. It is also the strongest substance known to mankind — 200 times stronger than steel and several times tougher than diamond.

A sheet of graphene as thin as clingfilm could hold the weight of an elephant. In fact, according to one calculation, an elephant would need to balance precariously on the end of a pencil to break through that same sheet.

Despite its strength, it is extremely flexible and can be stretched by 20 per cent without any damage.

It is also a superb conductor of electricity — far better than copper, traditionally used for wiring — and is the best conductor of heat on the planet.

But perhaps the most remarkable feature of graphene is where it comes from. Graphene is made from graphite, a plentiful grey mineral mostly mined in Chile, India and Canada.

A pencil lead is made up of many millions of layers of graphene. These layers are held together only weakly — which is why they slide off each other when a pencil is moved across the page.

Graphene was first isolated by Professors Konstantin Novoselov and Andrew Geim at Manchester University in 2004. The pair used sticky tape to strip away thin flakes of graphite, then attached it to a silicon plate which allowed the researchers to identify the tiny layers through a microscope.

Discovery: Professors Andre Geim, left, and Dr Konstantin Novoselov first isolated graphene in 2004. They later won the Nobel Prize for Physics last year

Russian-born Prof Novoselov, 37, believes graphene could change everything from electronics to computers.

‘I don’t think it has been over-hyped,’ he said. ‘It has attracted a lot of attention because it is so simple — it is the thinnest possible matter — and yet it has so many unique properties.

‘There are hundreds of properties which are unique or superior to other materials. Because it is only one atom thick it is quite transparent — not many materials that can conduct electricity which are transparent.’

Its discovery has triggered a boom for material science. Last year, there were 3,000 research papers on its properties, and 400 patent applications.

The electronics industry is convinced graphene will lead to gadgets that make the iPhone and Kindle seem like toys from the age of steam trains.

Modern touch-sensitive screens use indium tin oxide — a substance that is transparent but which carries electrical currents. But indium tin oxide is expensive, and gadgets made from it shatter or crack easily when dropped. Replacing indium tin oxide with graphene-based compounds could allow for flexible, paper-thin computer and television screens. South Korean researchers have created a 25in flexible touch-screen using graphene.

Ancient history: If the development of graphene is successful it will make the iPad and Kindle seem like toys from the age of the steam train

Imagine reading your Daily Mail on a sheet of electric paper. Tapping a button on the corner could instantly update the contents or move to the next page. Once you’ve finished reading the paper, it could be folded up and used afresh tomorrow.

Other researchers are looking at many ways of using graphene in medicine. It is also being touted as an alternative to the carbon-fibre bodywork of boats and bikes. Graphene in tyres could make them stronger.

Some even claim it will replace the silicon in computer chips. In the future, a graphene credit card could store as much information as today’s computers.

‘We are talking of a number of unique properties combined in one material which probably hasn’t happened before,’ said Prof Novoselov. ‘You might want to compare it to plastic. But graphene is as versatile as all the plastics put together.

‘It’s a big claim, but it’s not bold. That’s exactly why there are so many researchers working on it.’

Dr Sue Mossman, curator of materials at the Science Museum in London, says graphene has parallels with Bakelite — the first man-made plastic, invented in 1907.

Resistant to heat and chemicals, and an excellent electrical insulator, Bakelite easily made electric plugs, radios, cameras and telephones.

‘Bakelite was the material of its time. Is this the material of our times?’ she says. ‘Historically we have been really good at invention in this country, but we’ve been really bad at capitalising on it.’

If graphene isn’t to go the same way as other great British inventions which were never properly exploited commercially at home — such as polythene and carbon fibre — it will need massive investment in research and development. 

Core material: Graphene comes from a base material of graphite and is so thin that three millions sheets of the substance would be needed to make a layer 1mm thick

That’s why the Government’s move to support its development in the UK got a warm round of applause at the Conservative Party conference.

But compared to the investment in graphene in America and Asia, the £50 million promised by the Chancellor is negligible. South Korea is investing £195million into the technology. The European Commission is expected to invest one billion euros into graphene in the next ten years.

Yet despite the flurry of excitement, many researchers doubt graphene can live up to such high expectations.

It wouldn’t be the first wonder material that failed to deliver. In 1985 another form of carbon, called fullerenes or buckyballs, was hailed as the revolutionary new material of the era. Despite the hype, there has yet to be a major practical application.

And there are already some problems with using graphene. It is so good at conducting electricity that turning it into devices like transistors — which control the flow of electrical currents, so need to be able to stop electricity flowing through them — has so far proved problematic.

Earlier this year computer company IBM admitted that it was ‘difficult to imagine’ graphene replacing silicon in computer chips.

And sceptics point out that most new materials — such as carbon-fibre — take 20 years from invention before they can be used commercial use.

You might think from all the hype, that the road to a great graphene revolution has already been mapped out.

But its future is far from certain. In fact it’s barely been pencilled out in rough.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2045825/Graphene-strong-sheet-clingfilm-support-elephant.html#ixzz2WASFPjwi 

baboons understand numbers like humans

MONKEY MATHS!apes and humans not only share traits such as opposable thumbs, expressive faces and social systems, they also have in common the ability to understand numbers, researchers say. A new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait - the ability to understand numbers - also is shared by humans and their primate cousins.

"The human capacity for complex symbolic math is clearly unique to our species," said co-author Jessica Cantlon, assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.
"In this study we've shown that non-human primates also possess basic quantitative abilities. In fact, non-human primates can be as accurate at discriminating between different quantities as a human child," Cantlon said.
"This tells us that non-human primates have in common with humans a fundamental ability to make approximate quantity judgements," said Cantlon."Humans build on this talent by learning number words and developing a linguistic system of numbers, but in the absence of language and counting, complex math abilities do still exist."
The study tracked eight olive baboons, aged four to 14, in 54 separate trials of guess-which-cup-has-the-most-treats. Researchers placed one to eight peanuts into each of two cups, varying the numbers in each container. The baboons guessed the larger quantity roughly 75 per cent of the time on easy pairs when the relative difference between the quantities was large.
But when the ratios were more difficult to discriminate,say six versus seven, their accuracy fell to 55 per cent. That pattern, researchers say, helps to resolve a standing question about how animals understand quantity.
The baboons' choices relied on this latter "more than" or "less than" cognitive approach, known as the analog system, researchers said. Research has shown that children who have not yet learned to count also depend on such comparisons to discriminate between number groups, as do human adults when they are required to quickly estimate quantity.
- See more at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/baboons-understand-numbers-like-humans/1111757/#sthash.5lBDGRq0.dpuf

5 WAYS HACKERS COULD KILL U RIGHT NOW

Hacking Your Pacemaker

The hack
Pacemaker-hacking feels like a Hollywood plot. Assassinate someone by taking over the medical device that controls his heart? Surely that isn't possible in the real world.

Actually, it's totally possible. Last year, a researcher demonstrateda pacemaker hack in Australia, with a virus that could conceivably spread from one person to every electronically assisted heart within 30 feet.

The threat level
Probably limited to assassination targets. Think: high-profile people, who have pacemakers. It would be an elaborate attack, though, since you need more than just an internet connection to pull it off. Odds are that anyone interested in doing this could get a bomb or a pistol to the target cheaper and faster. This is Hollywood not because it's impossible, but because it's not very efficient.

Crashing A Plane

The hack
The prospect of a terrorist taking over an airplane is never a pleasant one, and given that today a plane can almost pilot itself, all that a potential hijacker has to do is get into the airplane's computers--he doesn't even need to be on the actual airplane.

This is well within the realm of possibility; there's going to be a demonstration on how to remotely hack an airplane at an upcoming security conference. This is apparently a particular worry for higher-end corporate jets, which may be more vulnerable than traditional commercial jets because they offer easier external access to internal computer systems--great for fast communication, but also for hackers.

Surely air traffic control is safe? Afraid not. Past security conferences have demonstrated that the future air traffic control console can be overwhelmed by false signals.

The threat level
The technological vulnerabilities are certainly worrisome, but airplanes really haven't been a popular terrorism target since 2001. Just because something is a passe target doesn't mean we should forget about it. But it makes more sense to understand what kinds of attacks terrorists like to do, and protect against those, rather than ones they could conceivably do but haven't done. These days, the popular attacks mostly involve bombs on the ground.

Breaking The Electrical Grid

The hack
Power outages kill more people than you'd think. Air-conditioning shuts off; stores, pharmacies, and hospitals close; cell phone service gets disrupted--all of which can be deadly, especially for vulnerable populations. According to a study on the human costof the 2003 power outage in New York, 90 deaths can be directly linked to the outage (that's 15 times more than New York's official total of 6). That blackout was caused by a small bug in a regional power company, but the consequences quickly spread and left up to 55 million people without power for three days.

What about a deliberate attack? Late last summer, hackers broke past a Canadian power company's security and gained access to the electrical controls. The hackers didn't wreak any havoc, but they could have. Internet-connected smart grids are especially vulnerable, because they are increasingly hooked up to the regular internet, giving outsiders easy access.

The threat level
The best a cyberattack could hope for is to hit a smaller power provider, mess with its controls, and have that spiral up into a much larger outage. But a small attack that mimics, say a power line failure, is what power companies spend time and money trying to prevent. And nowadays--especially since the 2003 outage--power companies have controls in place to avoid such mishaps. Chances are a small attack wouldn't provoke a bigger outage.

Power outages are also an incredibly imprecise way to attack a target, and it's hard for a terrorist group to claim credit for something that could easily have been a simple sensor error.

While it's possible to gain access to the controls of a small part of the grid, it'd be extremely difficult, time-consuming, and expensive for hackers to mount a larger attack. Writing for Motherboard, Brian Merchant says "In this case, it would be a terrorist cell hellbent on using a massive amount of time and resources to … cause a temporary blackout??"

Unlikely.

Wrecking Your Car

The hack
The same remote-controlled security systems that protect cars from burglars may open them up to cyber attacks. In 2010, researchers in automotive electronic security demonstrated that aphysical device could be installed in a car to give remote access to a malicious third party. Since then, the ability to take over a car's controls from afar has only grown. A study published in 2011 by the same researchers demonstrated that there are multiple wireless ways to access a car remotely. Systems like OnStar, which can disable and drive a car if it's reported stolen, can be accessed through cellular networks.

What can attackers do once they've gained access to your car? They could take over brakes, lights, and engines. That's a problem.

The threat level
The trick, like most of these cyber attacks, is that it's an elaborate way for an assailant to do something that's much simpler with a handgun. The amount of information you have to gather beforehand--to find the car of the person you want to kill and the times that person will be in his or her car--make for a good Hollywood montage, but that's about it.

What if some sadistic person just wanted to start hacking cars and driving them into things? That's a pretty irrational use of the skill it would take to do this, but if someone were so inclined, he or she would certainly ruin the lives of those involved in the crashes. For everyone else, it'd just make for another moderately bad commute.

Crashing A Drone Into Your Skull

The hack
Drones, that ubiquitous specter of technological doom covering front pages everywhere, can indeed be hacked. Or at least spoofed, which is like hacking if all a hacker could do was give the drone new directions and sometimes make it crash. The most famous case of this is when Iran allegedly captured the United States's stealth drone RQ-170, but similar stuff has happened stateside, too. Last summer, on a dare from the Department of Homeland security, students at University of Texas Austinspoofed a government drone.

In 2015, the FAA will clear new airspace for drones, and we'll truly be living in the drone age. Of course, researchers, police departments, and universities are already cleared to fly drones inplenty of places in the United States, so the possibility of a rogue spoofed drone already exists. This is a big concern for Congress, which wants to make sure that drones are not an excessive risk to add to our skies. The image of dozens of robots falling from above is nothing a politician wants to explain in a reelection campaign.

The threat level
You can only spoof one drone at a time, and there is only so much harm you can cause by feeding an unarmed machine the wrong GPS information. Given the average size of drones, like the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 pictured here, the death total would be limited to one or two people. The story of Aeschylus, an ancient Greek playwright who died when an eagle dropped a turtle on his bald head, suggests that death-by-flying object isn't impossible, but it is very unlikely.

RAZER EDGE TABLET IS A SHORTCUT TO THE FUTURE OF GAMING

The Edge is a Windows 8 tablet that runs the latest PC games. It offers attachable game controls, and can also slide into an HDMI dock for playing on a television or desktop monitor. For $1,350 with all the accessories, the Razer Edge is a home video game system, portable console and gaming PC all in rolled into one.For any gamer who’s been kicked out of the living room so the rest of the family can watch TV, the Razer Edge wants to be your dream device.

It’s also a glimpse into the inevitable future of “core” gaming, when we’re no longer tethered to a bulky set-top box or PC tower, and we’re able to traipse freely from one screen to the next. But while other firms are experimenting with fancy wireless trickery and cloud-based streaming, Razer tried to deliver the future through brute force, and there are unintended consequences.

JARED NEWMAN / TIME.COM

Inside, the Edge packs a dedicated NVidia graphics card, a powerful Intel Core i5 processor and 64 GB of storage, at a base price of $1,000 without accessories. (A “Pro” model includes a faster i7 processor, Bluetooth 4.0 and double the storage for $300 more, or quadruple the storage for $450.) The Razer Edge Pro review unit I’ve been testing handled games like Far Cry 3 and Dishonored with more smoothness and fidelity than an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

Not that you could actually play those games on a touch screen. Instead, you can tack on Razer’s $250 Gamepad, which clips onto the tablet like a pair of wings, each with their own thumbsticks, buttons and triggers. Or, you can just plug a wired gamepad or mouse/keyboard combo into the Edge’s full-sized USB port.

The result is a product that doesn’t look or feel futuristic. The Razer Edge is thicker than many thin-and-light laptops and heavier than a first-generation iPad. It has two large vents on the top edge that spew hot air during prolonged gaming sessions, and the bezel around the screen is wide compared to other tablets. The power brick is comparable to that of a full-sized laptop.

Also, the battery life is terrible. On 50% brightness, it lasts through about an hour of game time, and a little under four hours of regular computing.

However unfortunate, these are all necessary compromises. To deliver high-end gaming, the Razer Edge simply needs to run thicker, heavier and hotter than other tablets, and having a dedicated graphics processor always translates to lower battery life.

But the Edge’s other wounds are self-inflicted. For reasons unknown, Razer angled the Gamepad’s thumbsticks away from the player, making them harder to control. And because the face buttons are located directly underneath the sticks, they can be tricky to reach in the heat of battle. Razer needs to rethink the dual-wand design of these controls, and try to hew closer to the shape of existing game controllers. Also, the power cord doesn’t connect strongly enough to the tablet, and it’s prone to popping out when the nearest outlet is on your left side because of how the cable gets pulled the opposite way.

Re-purposing the PC as a portable or home gaming system brings software compromises as well. Some games should theoretically support a gamepad, but don’t. Occasionally you’ll run into the odd DirectX bug, or you’ll have to mess with video settings to get the best performance. The most annoying issue I ran into was a Steam message that popped up while playing Far Cry 3, which required pressing Shift-Tab to dismiss. Seeing as the GamePad has no Shift-Tab button, my only options were to let the message cover up part of the screen or plug in a keyboard to get rid of it.

To be fair, the Razer Edge has its glorious moments. Sitting in bed playing Borderlands 2 was a treat, and being able to transform the system into a home game console is well worth the $100 cost of the HDMI dock. (It also doubles as a handy way to watch Internet video sites like Hulu without paying for a subscription.) It’s also worth noting that because many games on Steam support cloud saves, existing PC gamers can play on their desktops and then pick up right where they left off on the Edge.

Still, despite my initial excitement over the Razer Edge, I didn’t touch the thing for more than a week of my loan period. It wasn’t because I lacked games to play — for part of the time, BioShock Infinite was at the top of my playlist — but because the experience didn’t come close to playing on my desktop PC. I only picked up the Edge again out of obligation, when Razer PR reminded me they’d be needing their review unit back soon, and I felt the need to log more play time.

JARED NEWMAN / TIME.COM

Now’s the time where I should express hope for a second-generation Razer Edge. An upgrade to Intel’s next-generation processors would bring significant battery life improvements, and in the meantime, Razer could fix the Gamepad’s (literally) sore spots.

But there’s a decent chance that the concept of a high-end gaming tablet will never really work. Integrated graphics are becoming good enough to handle many high-end PC games, without the drawbacks to weight, thickness, heat and battery life caused by a dedicated graphics card. (As some have noted, Microsoft’s Surface Pro already does an admirable job.) Attachable game controls and a docking station are great ideas, though, so maybe Razer can try to bring those accessories to a wider range of tablets.

As for the Razer Edge, several other reviews have dubbed it the Swiss Army knife of game consoles. Unfortunately, this metaphor works two ways: yes, it’s one package that serves many purposes, but the knife doesn’t cut as well, the scissors are tiny, the saw blade is ineffective and the screwdriver can be finicky. If it was cheaper, it could be worth the compromise. Right now it’s kind of like buying a gas station multi-tool at Leatherman prices.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2013/04/29/razer-edge-review-a-rocky-shortcut-to-the-future-of-gaming/#ixzz2RuU91Zpm

USING LASERS TO MANIPULATE BLOOD FLOW IN LIVING MICE

When you’ve got a clogged artery, your options are usually few and risky: anti-clotting drugs or surgery to unblock the clot or reroute blood flow past the blockage.
But researchers in China have figured out how to use a laser to clog and then clear a blocked blood vessel in a live mouse, without surgery. This is the first time scientists have been able to externally manipulate cells inside a living animal, and it could lead to a safer way to unclog arteries in the future.
The technique relies on a tool called optical tweezers. Each pair of pincers is actually made of a single, focused laser beam. Technically the optical tweezers don’t come into direct contact with the cells. Instead, they push them around using the small amount of momentum from the photons in the beam.
Researchers used the optical tweezers to manipulate red blood cells inside a mouse’s capillaries. Scientists zoomed in on capillaries in the mouse’s ear because these blood vessels are pretty shallow and easy to access. These blood vessels are so narrow that red blood cells have to flow through them single file.
By focusing the laser on a single blood cell flowing through the capillary, the researchers could trap it and stop the flow of blood. When the researchers turned off the laser to let go of the cell, blood began flowing again. Since the laser let the scientists work in all three dimensions, they were able to replicate this success in bigger blood vessels and with different types of cells, too.
Though the procedure is called a micro-operation, researchers didn’t have to cut the overlying tissue to get inside, and the heat of the laser didn’t cause any visible damage to the mouse’s cells. The study, published in Nature Communications today, is the first to demonstrate such non-invasive manipulation inside a live animal.
Having this kind of control from outside a living thing may one day help scientists improve targeted drug delivery and eventually lead to treatment for thrombosis, or blod clots, the researchers say. What’s more, optical tweezers can manipulate things as tiny as organelles, the smaller components that make up cells—so sub-cellular procedures could even be possible in theory.
Check out the video below to see the optical tweezers in action.

 

20 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT HAIR

iStock

1. Here’s the bald truth: Fur and hair are essentially the same thing, constructed of identical protein building blocks called keratin. 

2. All mammals have hair at some point in their lives, be it the fuzz on a newborn whale, a shield of hard porcupine quills or your long locks. 

3. Insects can wear it, too. The microscopic belly hairs on the male freshwater Micronecta may help amplify its mating call. Some scientists think that when the bug rubs its penis against the tip of its abdomen, the hairs trap air and sound, making it the world’s loudest animal relative to its size. 

4. The leg hairs on hunting spiders and crickets function as ears. The hairs sense air motion and can “hear” low-frequency sounds — buzzing bees, for example — and medium-frequency ones, such as car horns. 

5. Human hair can “taste.” Our lungs and nasal passages have exquisitely tiny hairs called cilia that sweep out impurities. A University of Iowa graduate student discovered that lung cilia respond only to bitter flavors, such as nicotine. Upon tasting it, the hairs increase their rate of sweeping.

 

6. Pathologists have noticed that nasal cilia continue to pulse for up to 21 hours after “their” human has died. 

7. On the outside, the average person has more than 100,000 head hairs, plus about 4.9 million more in assorted other places. 

8. Early humans probably shed their full body-hair suits because they were often infested with disease-carrying parasites like lice, fleas and mites, according to scientists at England’s John Radcliffe Hospital and University of Reading. 

9. When we lost our fur, the sun’s ultraviolet rays damaged our newly exposed skin, which reacted by producing melanin, a pigment that absorbs the sun’s solar radiation, explain anthropologists at Penn State. 

10. More prehistoric highlights: Some Neanderthals were redheads. A 2007 study at Harvard University and Germany’s Max Planck Society found a red-hair-coding variant of hair-color genes in 43,000- and 50,000-year-old Neanderthal remains.

11. Gingers were likely joined by blonds and brunets. The researchers note that, like modern-day humans, Neanderthals had variety in their hair genes. 

12. Is it true that blondes have more fun? In 2006, former Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan reported that in a sample of 101 toddlers, blond children were more withdrawn and shy. 

13. Hair knows when you are sleeping; it knows when you’re awake. “Clock genes” control our circadian rhythms, and the easiest place to extract evidence of their activity is from hair follicles, according to researchers at Japan’s Yamaguchi University. 

14. Follicles, or small clusters of cells, come out of the scalp when hair is plucked. Comparing follicles from different times of the day can reveal when genes were most active, and the pluckee most awake. 

15. Hair also knows where you’ve been. In 2010, University of Utah chemists found that tap water and locally bottled beverages in the 33 cities they tested contained a unique chemical signature that turned up in the hair of people who drank it.

16. If you pulled a heist in Denver but claimed you were in California, your hair could blow your alibi. Essentially, your 'do is a dirty rat. 

17. Maybe dirty isn’t so bad. Oily hair absorbs the air pollutant ozone seven times more than clean hair, according to environmental engineers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. 

18. The twist is that oily hair also interacts with air pollutants to create respiratory irritants such as formaldehyde and 4-oxopentanal. The actual health effects of these “personal clouds” remain unknown. 

19. One thing is certain: You don’t want to eat your hair. Trichophagia is a rare but potentially life-threatening compulsion to ingest hair. In 2012, doctors in India removed a 4-pound hairball from a 19-year-old girl’s stomach. 

20. Eventually, we may opt to induce baldness, or alopecia. Hair keeps us warm — something we won’t have to worry about in climate-controlled space stations. Astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell at University College London adds, “Hair can be very inconvenient as it floats around your head in zero gravity.”

SAMSUNG TO START MANUFACTURING OF GALAXY S4 IN INDIA SOON

Samsung India today said it will soon start manufacturing its flagship high-end smartphone Galaxy S4 in India.

"We are planning to start manufacturing of S4 soon at our Noida facility," Samsung Mobile and Digital Imaging Country Head Vineet Taneja said.

He, however, refused to share any time frame by when the production will start. The Noida facility is manufacturing about 35-40 million phones annually, ncluding 12 smartphones such as Galaxy S3. The company currently imports the recently launched Galaxy S4 from South Korea.

Sensing huge demand for Galaxy S4, the company is also looking to double up the high-end smartphone (above Rs 20,000) market size in India, which is currently contributing around 10-12 per cent of the overall smartphone market.

The Galaxy S4, which is packed with newer imaging features as well as 'gesture- control' technology, has a five-inch full HD super AMOLED touchscreen, 13 mega pixel rear and 2 mega pixel front camera and supports 3G networks.

Although Samsung is the market leader in smartphone market in India, competition from Apple, BlackBerry and Nokia has put pressure on it to add new software features to maintain its lead.

According to research firm IDC, the overall mobile phone market in India reached about 218 million units in 2012, growing 16 per cent year-on-year.

Of this, 16.3 million units were smartphones, but the category saw a growth of about 48 per cent. Samsung was the leader in the quadcore and 5-inch plus screen size models, IDC added. The demand for smartphones is expected to be around 34-36 million units this year.

Globally, Samsung had 30.3 per cent share of the smartphone market (with sales of 215.8 million units) in 2012, while Apple had a 19.1 per cent share with sales of 135.9 million units, according to IDC.