Saturday, 30 July 2016

Women Empowerment

Everywhere we are seeing organizations talking about women empowerment, several programs and plans by companies and government as well to increase women participation in innovation, business, technology and various other things. What is this all about? Where have everyone reached?

Figures Released by IMF claims that Average Female Labor Force Participation Remained low at 50% with levels and trends varying across Regions. World Bank also added and stated that Women now represent global labor force around 40%. Regional Differentiation has been major driver for the varied participation across globe. Other factors such as social need, literacy, policies of the countries followed the later.


MGI report predicted that the gender parity is going to change the world and grow immensely. They also mentioned that if gender parity is met by all countries $28 trillion of additional annual GDP in 2025 can be created. In the current scenario women are half of the Worlds working-age Population but generate only 37% of GDP. 75% of global unpaid work is done by women too.

Developed countries like USA and UK are closing this gap by providing immense opportunities for women entrepreneurship and developing countries still lagged behind. 

Monday, 18 July 2016

Do you know which phone you are owning?

Even before we all jumped from normal phones to smart phones and got busy with making lives simpler, things changed in a brisk and we all now are in an era where anything and everything is available in our finger tips. Did you know in this run from basic phone to a smart phone era there was a kind of phone that brightened and is now fading away? So let me quickly explain you two types of phones that acquired market first, these were featured phones and smart phones.
Basically featured phones are phones that cannot run OS or applications but will have their own features that support emailing, browsing and other additional activities apart from communication. Featured phones were also low cost phones that hit the mass and acquired the market, Until recent past featured phone still held about 56% of market due to low cost. This could not remain same or increasing for featured phones.
             
Nokia Asha 501-A featured phone with touch screen 

                                                                          Samsung Phone-A smart phone

On the other hand Smart phones are phones that can run different Operating systems, run applications and perform several other functions. Smartphones initially hit only the high end society due to the cost and other factors. But smart phones made a break through by introducing themselves to mass with low cost as featured phones and acquired complete market in no time.
 In 2011, feature phones accounted for 60 percent of the mobile telephones in the United States and 70 percent of mobile phones sold worldwide. In 2013, smartphones outsold feature phones for the first time, accounting for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of that year. A survey of 4,001 Canadians by Media Technology Monitor in fall 2012, reported that 83 per cent of the Anglophone population owned a cellphone. About two thirds of the mobile phone owners polled said they had a smartphone and the other third had feature phones or non-smartphones.
Although a feature phone is a low-end device and a smartphone a high-end one, there is no standard way of distinguishing them.  Smartphone and feature phone are not mutually exclusive categories. A complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past. Because technology changes rapidly, what was a smartphone ten years ago may be considered only a feature phone today. For example, today's feature phones typically also serve as a personal digital assistant (PDA) and portable media player and have capabilities such as cameras, touchscreen, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband internet access, and even mobile gaming.