Global HD consumer electronics shipment to rise at 19%

 

According to recent research study by RNCOS "Global Consumer Electronics Market Forecast to 2013", high definition consumer electronics shipments are projected to grow at a CAGR of around 19% during the forecast period 2011-2013. With the fast expanding list of HD content suppliers and the rapid adoption rate of HDTVs & STBs, HD video transmission and delivery will become major motivators for consumer to invest money in new technology television displays and playback/recording equipments, finds RNCOS.

RNCOS estimates global shipments of HD consumer electronics are expected to be more than triple by 2013 from 2008 levels as HD becomes the ubiquitous video standard worldwide. RNCOS also says High Definition set top boxes will capture the major chunk of the global HD consumer electronics market during the forecast period. As per the report, HD STBs' shipment has witnessed significant growth during the past few years with growth in digital televisions (DTV) and high-definition televisions shipments.

As per RNCOS, the Asia-Pacific region will become the dominant territory during the forecast period, accounting for nearly half of the global HD STBs demand. India and China will represent majority of this demand, however both the countries have registered slow uptake of multi-channel TV till date owing to price and technology limitations. As costs reduce, both the countries will record phenomenal growth, adds RNCOS.

India unites top 10 Wiki donors club

 

It is not only the Indian billionaires who have realized the power of giving, small donors also seem to have caught the "giving" fever. India has moved up the rank of donors to the Wikimedia Foundation to become the sixth largest donor in 2010-11 after donors from the US, Canada, Japan, Spain and the UK.

Nearly 11,000 Indians donated $ 193,657 to the foundation, which raised a total of $ 14.81 mn through donations from across the world. Donors from the US contributed over $ 10 mn, the highest among all countries.

In 2007-08, India ranked 18th in the list with merely 583 donors contributing about $ 12,532. A year later, 2008-09, India was at 15th rank with 1759 donors contributing $ 38,776. In 2009-10, the country slipped one place to the 16th rank with 2956 donors contributing $ 52,156. An average Indian who donated gave $ 18.5 to the foundation this year up from the previous average of $ 17.6 last year.

So why did they do it? Some say that they can't imagine a life without Google and Wikipedia. Some say that it feels good to be doing something for a good cause. The reasons may be many but it will be a very small price to pay if the foundation goes on to realize its vision to create the "sum total of all human knowledge."

Says T Gautham Shenoy, a creative director at an advertising agency, "It's my way of giving something back to Wikipedia for being what it is today. Perhaps not authoritative, and definitely not without its flaws and errors but it surely is the first port of call for many of us on a daily basis and the go-to site for quick references. And can you image the result if it achieves its dream of being the storehouse of all human knowledge? This is my contribution to help make that dream come true. As they say, Information wants to be free. But it takes money to keep it free."

Coimbatore based self-employed professional, who goes by the name Sodabottle on Wikipedia, donated $ 46 to the foundation. "I was paid for speaking about Wikipedia at a conference at a college. I donated the amount to the foundation instead, as I am doing the Wikipedia outreach as a volunteer," he told ET. Contributing to Wikipedia has made him a better writer in both Tamil and English, he said.

In November last, the Wikimedia Foundation had set out on its annual fund raising exercise to keep Wikipedia, the worlds largest online encyclopedia running for free. They had set a target of raising $ 16 mn from donations across the world. Lately, the foundation has been active in emerging markets and had announced its intent to improve its focus in countries such as India and Brazil.

"Any partial or full commercial ownership of Wikipedia could severely impact its neutrality with a systemic-bias. At the same time, Jimbo Wales' focus on developing Wikipedia in Indian languages is supposed to provide a great opportunity for consolidation of knowledge with indigenous flavors from Indian sub-continent on this monolith global platform," said Milind Joshi, another donor who works as a principal business technology consultant at a top MNC in Bangalore. The rise in the number of donors is also being attributed to an increase in disposable income.

"We are concentrating on professionals who own credit cards and have high disposable incomes. There are over 18.2 million credit cards in the country and individual fundraising on the internet is potentially a very large source of funds for us," said Anirudh Bhati, Treasurer, Wikimedia India Chapter.

UBS latest to reduce India's FY12 growth forecast to 7.7%

UBS on Wednesday joined the growing list of brokerages lowering India's 2011/12 economic growth forecast, paring Asia's third-largest economy's growth to 7.7% from 8%, as interest rate rises and higher oil prices start to bite. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch had last week lowered their growth forecast for the Indian economy in the next fiscal year that begins in April to 7.7% and 8.2%.

UBS also cut the world's second-fastest growing major economy's gross domestic product forecast for the current fiscal year to 8.7% from 9% on weak December-quarter growth and continuing weakness in the industrial output growth. "The reason for the slowdown is as before: lagged impact of todays tight money on demand plus effect of higher oil prices," Philip Wyatt, an economist at UBS wrote in a note, adding he sees the economy recovering to 8.6% growth in 2012/13.

India's economy grew at a slower-than-expected 8.2% in the December quarter from a year earlier, after expanding at 8.9% in the previous two quarters. Industrial output in January topped forecasts, but was still weak at 3.7% annual rise. "We expect WPI (wholesale price index) inflation to accelerate from 7% in March 2011 to 7.7% a year hence," Wyatt wrote. India's headline inflation unexpectedly quickened in February on rising fuel and manufacturing prices, raising expectations for aggressive central bank tightening beginning later this week.

The market and economists both expect a 25 basis points increase in key rates on Thursday, when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reviews its monetary policy. UBS said the slowdown in the industrial production (IP) growth suggests policy-pause is round the corner. "Slower IP trends indicate weaker domestic pricing pressures, but lending growth remains way above the official 20% projection. So, we still expect the RBI to act on March 17 - with a 25 basis points. But after this, we could see a policy pause," Wyatt said.

Indian bank loans rose 23.2% on year as of February 25, latest data showed on Friday. UBS said rate increases would make an effort to bring lending growth back closer to 20% and reduce the still elevated price pressures. "Our calculations suggest that if global oil prices don't rise too much further, then inflation could stay in the 7% to 8%range this year. Consequently, the money tightening process could be near an end," Wyatt wrote.

Exports of India Steel to Japan Likely to Hike

Exports of finished steel to Japan will rise in the coming months as the Asian nation rebuilds after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, two senior Indian steel company executives said Tuesday. Economists estimate damages from the earthquake could run as high as 10 trillion yen and knock three percentage points off Japan's gross domestic product growth this year.

"It would be important to note that a lot of the wooden houses and structures traditionally found on Japan's coastline may now be replaced with buildings made of steel and cement, as they would be better able to withstand the impact of a tsunami," Malay Mukherjee, chief executive of Essar Steel Ltd., said on the sidelines of an industry event.  He said the quake could lead to a reduction in steel exports from Japan.

"It's difficult to gauge the impact on prices of steel and raw materials right now. However, a rise in demand is very likely," he said, adding that another major source of worry for Japanese steel mills could be the availability of electricity after the earthquake. A growing list of companies in a range of Japan's industries, from consumer electronics to steel makers and retail store operators, were suspending parts of their operations affected by the earthquake, while preparing to cope with planned power outages.

Several metal and building materials stocks around Asia edged higher Tuesday on hopes for reconstruction opportunities in Japan, while coal shares climbed and uranium miners plunged on worries about the prospects for nuclear power projects. State-run Steel Authority of India Ltd.'s chairman, C.S. Verma, told reporters that Indian steel companies may export more finished steel to Japan when it starts rebuilding efforts. Mr. Verma also said he expects international coking coal prices to decline in the near-term as Japanese steel mills are likely to slow down purchases.

"We expect Japan to import less coking coal for the next two months," he said, adding that Japan imports between 9 million and 10 million metric tons of the vital steel-making material each month. Indian iron ore miners also said that spot prices of the ore, which have slipped over the past month due to low demand from China, are likely to slip further as Japanese steel mills slow down immediate purchases while they recover from the earthquake.

"In the short-term, demand for iron ore from Japan may decline as the entire machinery there will have to stabilize first," said R.K. Sharma, secretary general of the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries. "But once the country goes to rebuild its infrastructure, demand should actually bolster." Japan bought 5.87 million tons of iron ore from India in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010, or as much as 5% of exports by the world's third-largest supplier. In the past month, the export price of ore with 58% iron has dropped to about $140 a metric ton, including cost and freight, from $168 a ton in February, while the price of ore with 50% iron has halved to $40 a ton.

Pranab Mukherjee's Plan

The Centre’s game plan, as revealed by the Budget, is all about sustaining growth. But fixing implementation is the crucial next step. Before Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the Union Budget for 2011-12, many political observers felt that he may just use it as an opportunity to shore up the government’s diminishing equity. Others expected some big-ticket reforms to indicate that the government had recovered from the sting of a series of scams and meant business worthy of the mandate people gave it two years ago.

Belying either expectation, Mukherjee laid out plans to simplify the administrative machinery and improve economic efficiency to prepare for the big ideas that could come later. If everything goes according to plan, a unified goods and services tax for the entire nation and a brand new direct tax code would become a reality; each citizen will have a right to food and perhaps even have health coverage, well in time for the 2014 elections.

The Budget, both by what it announced and what it did not, reiterated a guiding principle that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has articulated over the past couple of years — preserving growth momentum is paramount. And it will rely heavily on private investment to pull it off. UPA, by its own admission, had come back to power with the mandate of ‘inclusive growth’. However, each of the three budget speeches in UPA-II list ‘sustaining high growth’ before ‘making development more inclusive’ as priority.

“There has to be growth before there is inclusion. Without growth there cannot be any inclusion,” says one senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office. This budget clearly shows which side of the debate the government has flipped for. It promised to cut spending, even on some of its flagship social welfare plans (such as the rural jobs guarantee scheme) and subsidies, preferring to tighten its finances with a stiffer fiscal deficit target of 4.6 percent (of the GDP) as against a previous target of 4.8 percent for 2011-12.

In Favour Of Growth

The growth versus development debate has been engaging some of the best minds, as India continues to battle growing inequality and persistent poverty despite fast growth.

Worldwide audiences were captivated recently when top economists and thinkers from across the world inconclusively yet hotly debated India’s growth story in an online forum. Economists such as Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya argued for pro-market reforms as they saw growth as an effective and primary tool for alleviating poverty. It also allows governments to have more resources to bring about redistributive justice, they said.

However, others such as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen believe that excessive focus on growth is inappropriate. While agreeing that growth helps the poor, Sen believes that excessive focus on growth rates alone, especially in comparisons between India and China, is misleading. What really matter are the fruits of growth like improved human development indicators, he felt.

“People (in India) have started taking growth for granted” — This is a standard refrain among India’s policymakers. It is in this context that the Budget for 2011-12, and what it hopes to do in key areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and systemic efficiency, perhaps needs to be interpreted. The budget lacks short-term measures for tackling food inflation with the government hoping that fresh arrivals of grains and vegetables after a good farming season would by itself take care of that. But it does look at supply side reforms such as a boost to building good storage capacities to tackle price rise in the long term and reduce estimated wastage of 40 percent of India’s fruit and vegetable output.

“After a long time, I have seen a budget which has initiated some very important reforms in agriculture,” says Ramesh Chand of National Council for Agriculture Policy. Chand says the trick lies in pushing those reforms, which, while being crucial, does not necessarily require political consensus. He says the government has recognised the enormity of the constraints on supply and storage and is banking on private investment to remove them.

Farming will also get a boost from direct cash transfer of subsidies that will help improve systemic efficiency and plug leakage. Senior officials say Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a hand in pushing this reform through. A PMO official says that it is typical of Singh to let debates and dialogues play out in full before taking a decision.