DataWind bags UK's most innovative mobile company award for making innovative Aakash tablet for $35

British-Indian firm DataWind has won the Smart UK Project award from UK government for nation's 'Most Innovative Mobile Company', beating competition from the other three finalists blippar, P2i and QRpedia. The competition run by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), began its search for UK's most innovative mobile company in November 2011. The winner was announced at Mobile World Congress at Barcelona this week.

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is a government department that helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy.

DataWind has developed and manufactured the $35 Android powered Aakash tablet.

Montreal based Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind said, "We are honoured to be recognised; it is a great validation of our vision and I hope this will help create greater impetus for UK innovation."

Russell Buckley, one of the Smart UK Project judges, said, "We were very impressed by the quality of all the finalists, it was a tough decision but we are very pleased that DataWind has won the Smart UK Project 2012. There is a global potential and the will to transform lives and society, all using the resources of a British company."

DataWind, has also been named among world's Top 50 most innovative companies by Fast Company.

Aakash which is an Android device with a 7-inch touchscreen, 3-hour battery life, and 32 GB of storage is available starting at $35 for students.

The Indian government plans to purchase and give away 100,000 units in the first run to schoolchildren and hopes to purchase 50 lakh tablets this year.

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Apple's iPhone 4S accounts 29% of smartphone market in UK‎

Apple’s iPhone 4S now accounts for around 29.1 per cent of the UK smartphone market, according to new research.

The research comes courtesy of Kantar Worldpanel, which found that 71.4 percent of British mobile phone sales were smartphones during Q4 of 2011.

‘Over half of the British population (50.3 per cent) now owns a smartphone,’ claimed the report.

Apple’s iPhone 4S accounted for 29.1 per cent of the UK smartphone market, making up almost one quarter of all smartphone sales in November and early December.

‘Android holds on to its lead but Apple is making inroads, increasing its share of the British market from 21.7 per cent a year ago to 29.1 per cent now, said Consumer Insight Director Dominic Sunnebo.

He added: ‘The jump we saw in Apple’s share last period was clearly not just a blip caused by the iPhone 4S release. Although the majority of growth is coming from the new handset, Apple’s latest pricing structure is also working in its favour with no discernable drop in sales of older iPhone 4 and 3GS models.’

Kantar expects Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform to grow by around eight per cent by the end of 2012, following the release of a new handsets after MWC 2012 and the arrival of the Windows Phone Tango and Apollo updates.

‘It seems that the Lumia 800 release has helped Nokia to maintain its customer loyalty,’ says Kantar, ‘albeit at a slower rate than it might wish for, with over a quarter of Windows Phone 7 customers having owned Symbian handsets in the past.’

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UK's new spy plan to store Phone and email records

For the first time, Britain plans to store details of all phone calls, text messages, emails and websites visited online as part of the government's new anti-terror plans, says a media report.

Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.

The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by, the 'Daily Telegraph' reported.

UK's security services will have widespread access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook. Direct messages between subscribers to websites like Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games, the report said.

It is certain to cause controversy over civil liberties - but also raise concerns over security of records.

The plan has been drawn up on the advice of MI5, the home security,the home security service, MI6, which operates abroad, and GCHQ, the government's 'listening post' to monitor communications.

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