HTC Corporation and Tata Docomo have announced a tie up to launch the HTC Desire handset in India. It is the latest Android 2.1 smartphone that offers the enhanced HTC Sense experience to users.
Telecom Yatra first reported about the launch plan in May.
HTC Desire comes with a 3.7-inch touch-sensitive screen with 480 X 800 WVGA resolution and a 1-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. For Tata Docomo users in India, the handset is available with an exclusive offer wherein postpaid subscribers will get free data download of 500 MB per month for six months. To avail this offer, customers will have to SMS Android to 54321 from their HTC Desire handset.
The handset also comes with the new HTC Sense, which focuses on improving mobile interactions. It has a new HTC application and widget called Friend Stream that aggregates all social communication including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised flow of updates.
The HTC Desire will be available at a market operating price of Rs 28,900 at all authorised HTC resellers across the country.

Ultra Mobile Technology is the latest to be lured by the Indian mobile handset market.
On Thursday, the company announced its plans to launch a range of mobile handsets and services to view TV channels on mobile phones.
The company in its press release said it will bring the service with the highest Resolution display ever built into a phone, in the coming months.
Other than facilitating TV viewing, Ultra Mobiles will have features such as dual SIM, GPRS, Bluetooth and FM radio.
The company commenced operations in June this year with its corporate office based in Mumbai. Ultra Mobile aggregates premium entertainment content from many content providers, and then optimises the content for small screen or mobile viewing.

Mobile subscription all over the world has crossed the 5 billion mark. India alone contributes more than 600 million subscribers to this mammoth total.
Combine this number with the fact that on average, each person changes his cell phone every six months. With this in mind it is not difficult to ascertain the large number of mobiles being disposed of all over the world.
Huge BurdenOld mobile phones form a major part of the total e waste not only in India but across the world. And although the handset industry’s contribution to e waste still isn’t very alarming, looking a few years ahead, the case might be totally different.
A Nokia spokesperson agreed. “By virtue of its weight and size, the contribution of mobile waste to overall e waste is not very high. However, this does not have any implication on the responsibility that this industry has in creating awareness on recycling of e waste,” he said.
The spokesperson added, “The total number of mobile phones sold in the country could be an indicator of the potential size of the market. According to Gartner, India will sell 138.6 million mobile phones up 18.5 per cent over the previous year.”
While e waste inventory based on obsolescence rate in India for the year 2005 was estimated to be nearly 1.5 lakh tonnes, the number is expected to exceed 8 lakh tonnes by 2012. Mobile phones constitute a major component of this waste.
A report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) this year in February stated that total e waste generated in India is about 4.3 lakh tonnes, of which mobile phones contribute about 1,700 tonnes.
The unfortunate part is that while developed countries have a proper system for recycling these disposed devices, such a system is lacking in India. It’s not just about a system, even awareness on recycling e waste is lacking in the second largest mobile market in the world.
Of approximately 3.8 lakh metric tonnes of e waste generated in 2007-2008, about 1.5 metric tonnes were available for recycling, as per a study sponsored by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and conducted by the Electronics Industries Association of India. The study also stated that the share of mobile phones and televisions towards e waste is considerable.

Even now, most people have at least phones lying unused at their homes, piling in their almirah or at the most given away to the local scrap man. The reason being they simply didn’t know what to do with them.
In addition to this, approximately 50,000 tonnes of e waste is dumped into India every year through imports, according to a source. The main reason for this is that the cost of recycling products in India is ten times less than it is in the USA.

Recycling RequiredEvery journey begins with a small step, so if we need to tackle the problem of e waste, the start may as well be made by proper disposal of mobile waste (m waste).
Cellphones contain many different substances that are toxic and potentially hazardous to the environment, as well as to human health. These include ferrous and non-ferrous metals, lead, magnesium, copper, mercury, plastics, glass, liquid crystals, barium, concrete, ceramics, rubber, arsenic etc.
Hence, it becomes crucial that m waste is disposed of in a proper manner. Also, after recycling, the materials obtained can be used to make useful items such as utensils, benches etc. In fact, metals extracted from e waste are resold in the commodity market by recycling agencies not only in India but worldwide.

Status CheckIn India, the handling of e waste, from collecting to dismantling to recycling e waste, is mainly taken care of by the informal sector.
At some places in Delhi, printed circuit boards (PCBs) of mobile phones are sold to scrap dealers for as low as Rs 6 per piece. And it’s not just PCBs, almost all parts of phones are up for sale. Batteries and fiber bodies are sold by the dozen.These are then burnt, usually in slum areas, in open air. What remains are a few grams of copper, aluminum and other metals. This process does irreparable damage to the environment and to the health of people inhaling the toxic fumes in the air.
Many organisations in India are trying to put in order the way recycling is done in the country. These organisations collect e waste through their collection centres and transport them to recycling plants. Once the scrap reaches a plant, metallic and non metallic components are separated.
Telecom giants such as Nokia, LG and Tata Teleservices (TTSL) have now started generating awareness about the issue. Nokia has started a ‘take back’ scheme in various cities wherein mobile phone users can dispose their used handsets and accessories, regardless of the brand, at recycling bins in Nokia Priority Dealers and Nokia Care Centers.

Nokia passes on m waste to companies that reclaim materials from the phones and accessories. These companies are assessed on a regular basis to make sure they’re doing things properly and that anything handed over to them is recycled responsibly, said the Nokia spokesperson.
Nokia had collected close to 16 tonnes of e waste (mobile phones and accessories) till April this year as part of their ‘take back’ campaign started in January 2009. Nokia’s Planet Ke Rakhwale community already has a member base of 20,000 people.
On the other hand, recycling companies such as Attero Recycling work with various companies including telecom giants such as LG and TTSL. They also try to touch base with the informal sector and try and minimise damage to the environment and to human health by open air burning.

Regulation regarding e wasteIn India, there are no specific environmental laws or guidelines for e waste. None of the existing environmental laws have any direct reference to electronic waste or refer to the way it is handled as being hazardous. However, as some components of electronic waste fall under the ‘hazardous’ and ‘non-hazardous’ waste categories, they are covered under the purview of ‘The Hazardous Waste Management Rules, 2003’.
This regulation defines hazardous waste as “any waste which by reason of any of its physical, chemical, reactive, toxic, flammable, explosive or corrosive characteristics causes danger or is likely to cause danger to health or environment, whether alone or when on contact with other wastes or substances.”
As per the guidelines for environmentally sound management of e waste, Maharashtra ranks first followed by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab in the list of e waste generating states in India.
In these guidelines, the Ministry of Environments and Forests’ central Pollution Control Board has proposed the extended producer responsibility (EPR) as an environment protection strategy.
This makes the producer responsible for the entire life cycle of the product, especially for take back, recycle and final disposal. Thus, the producers’ responsibility is extended to the post consumer stage of the product life cycle. This needs to be included in the legislative framework making EPR a mandatory activity associated with the production of electronic and electrical equipment over a period of time.

“The EPR law is already present is Europe, certain parts of US and Japan. In India, it is already in draft stage and the law should be coming out soon. It will give boost to proper disposal of e waste in India. And companies like us will get more e waste,” said the Nokia spokesperson.
Welcoming the move by the government, the Nokia spokesperson added, “Nokia welcomes the government’s initiative for management of the e waste in the country. The draft notification is a significant move towards better management of e waste in the country. The regulation would help in development of the recycling infrastructure and would provide a framework for action by all stakeholders.”
However, the fact remains that policies and regulations will prove ineffective until consumers take action and start contributing.
Even small steps such as not mixing old phones with household garbage and dropping them instead at recycling centres set up by NGOs and manufacturers will make a huge difference.

Over the last two to three years, there has been a spurt in mobile App stores. Especially after the grand success of the iPhone, applications are the new gold mine.
To tap this gold rush, many biggies in the telecom space are launching their own application markets and mobile platforms.
The examples include Apple iOS, Android, Sybian, Blackberry, Palm and bada. Although many of these OSs existed before iOS came into being, applications as a separate area of focus didn’t exist.
These were mostly proprietary OSs, mainly created to become unique selling propositions of the devices they worked on. But with the emergence of applications as a source of additional revenue, these platforms are opening up to the developer community.
Even telecom operators such as Airtel and Vodafone do not want to be left behind and have joined the bandwagon with their own app stores.
Opening up the OS has multiple benefits. The first one being revenue earned to distribute apps created by independent developers; and second, it also makes the OS more attractive for the buyer as he gets more options and flexibility.
For the developer community it means an easy market for their products, an opportunity which doesn’t require much investment. These platforms are creating new entrepreneurs every day, with an entire industry springing up. Some of these companies are four to five people teams which create applications and sell them across the world without the need for a huge marketing budget, or having to travel to the customer to sell.
However, as with anything else, the applications business has it own set of pit falls. And the biggest of them is that there are too many application platforms. Lokesh Gupta, chief executive officer, Spice Labs, says, “I agree that there are too many application platforms and this is not sustainable in the long run; there will be some short of consolidation. However, in the current context, it (numerous app platforms are) fuelling entrepreneurial skills and innovation, and will continue to do so in the near future.”
With so many platforms, it becomes very difficult to test and optimise applications for each and every device.
This problem gets accentuated when you have multiple form factors. “In iPhone kind of environment you have only slight variation between devices and thus it is easier to handle, but with Android or Symbian, you have multitude of devices with different screen size, Processor and inputs. In such a situation you choose the best seller and create applications accordingly,” said Rohith Bhat, managing director and chief executive officer of Robosoft.
The problem grows further with operator run application stores, where there is no end to device variation.
As the industry moves forward, standardisation is the key and there are strong signs that the mobile industry is moving in that direction. Lokesh said, “We are already seeing signs of standardisation. For instance, we have capacitive technology as becoming the norm; same is true with the screen size, 240×320, 320X480, 640X200 etc becoming the most common screen sizes in up coming phones. Same is true for the processor.”
In the mobile processor space also, ARM and Qualcomm have a majority of the market share. If these are indications of the future, then surely we are moving in the direction of the PC industry in which we have reached a level where there are a couple of standards which are most popular.
As far as platforms are concerned, none of the existing platforms need to die, however some of the underlying features of the platform will get standardized, thereby enabling cross platform application development and reducing the testing and customisation time and in turn, reducing development time and complexity itself.
The other possibility is that only few will survive, the way it is in the PC industry where only three are big and Windows is the biggest with more than 90 per cent market share.