[Nasheman news] New Delhi The overall global smartphone market declined for the first time in 2018, registering 4 per cent drop from 1,558.8 million unit shipments in 2017 to 1,498.3 million units 2018, Counterpoint Research said on Thursday.

The fourth quarter smartphone shipments for 2018 recorded a decline of 7 per cent, marking it the fifth consecutive quarter of smartphone decline.

Samsung had 19 per cent share, followed by Apple and Huawei, both at 14 per cent, globally. Xiaomi with 8 per cent market share was fourth.

“The decline in smartphone shipments can be attributed to lengthening replacement cycles in developed markets like US, China and Western Europe,” said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research.

Smartphone original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) tried to push sales by adding features such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), multiple camera assemblies, full-screen displays and in-screen fingerprint scanners, etc.

“But consumers held on to their devices longer due to the absence of ground-breaking innovations and higher prices of devices being offered by the OEMs,” Pathak added.

Huawei, OPPO and Vivo continue to dominate with strong performances in China, India, Asia and parts of Europe.

Samsung and Apple saw tough times as demand for their flagship phones waned due to competition from affordable yet premium phones from Chinese brands such as Huawei and OnePlus, the report said.

“The collective smartphone shipment growth of emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Russia and others was not enough to offset the decline in China, which was responsible for almost one-third of global smartphone shipments in 2018,” said Research Analyst Shobhit Srivastava.

Xiaomi reached a record fourth position for the full year after two years of setbacks thanks to immense growth in India.

It has surpassed OPPO globally to take back the fourth position.

“BBK Group (which owns OPPO, Realme, Vivo and OnePlus brands) is collectively the world’s third largest manufacturer, even bigger than Huawei in terms of volume,” said the report.

Huawei continued to have its sights on Apple and should surpass Apple as the second largest brand globally in 2019 if it does not face any sanctions from the US the way ZTE was cut-off from American suppliers, noted the report.

Nasheman News :  The Sensex on Wednesday opened over 200 points higher while the Nifty reclaimed the 10,700 mark owing to strong gains in banking stocks.

The BSE Banking index gained over 1 per cent.

However, investors would be cautious ahead of the third quarter results of key companies — Bajaj Auto, ICICI Bank, LIC Housing Finance, NTPC — to be announced later in the day.

Also, investors across the globe will take cues from the key US-China trade talks to begin later in the day.

The S&P BSE Sensex opened over 200 points higher at 35,819.67 from its previous close of 35,592.50.

At 9.16 a.m., the Sensex traded 155.67 points or 0.44 per cent higher at 35,748.17.

The broader Nifty also opened higher at 10,702.25 from its Tuesday’s close of 10,652.20. It traded 51.75 points or 0.49 per cent up at 10,703.95.

Dewan Housing Finance Corporation (DHFL) stocks continued to witness heavy selling pressure.

Shares of the housing finance institution, fell over 6 per cent to Rs 159.70 per shares in the morning trade session.

The shares of DHFL tanked on Tuesday after Cobrapost, a news website claimed that primary promoters of DHFL siphoned off over Rs 31,000 crore of public money.

[Nasheman news] San Francisco After iOS and Android, Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp is now rolling out “Picture in Picture (PiP) mode” for web users that will allow them to view videos within a chat window, without opening third party pages or apps.

The feature comes as part of the 0.3.2041 update along with new improvements and security fixes, WABetaInfo, a fan website that tracks WhatsApp, reported on Sunday.

In the previous web version, the messaging app released the PiP feature to watch shared videos.

Now WhatsApp has finally submitted a new update for the web platform, giving the possibility to use the PiP feature for videos hosted on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Streamable, the report added. 

To force the update, WhatsApp web users need to clear their browser cache and re-launch the browser. 

The PiP feature was rolled out in January 2018 and December 2018 for iOS and Android users respectively. 

The Facebook-owned company has over 200 million monthly active users in India and is one of the most popular mobile apps worldwide.

Nasheman News : Will there be an interim budget or a vote-on-account on February 1. While the suspense on who will present it has ended with Piyush Goyal again being given additional charge of the Finance Ministry, with general elections round the corner, intense speculation continues about the final shape of the document he will unveil.

This speculation is about the nature of the upcoming budget — on whether it would be a simple vote-on-account to be passed by Parliament to permit government expenditure in the transition period or whether Goyal will go beyond that by presenting full estimates of both revenue and expenditure as well as policy measures.

While an incoming government has the freedom to change the estimates in the interim budget when it presents the final budget after taking office, outgoing governments in India have generally followed the convention of avoiding major policy announcements or taxation proposals in the interim budget.

Going by recent history, however, interim budgets have been passed thrice since 2000, and according to a market research firm, the upcoming one might be the last opportunity for the BJP-led NDA government to “woo a larger section of the society” by altering both taxes and outlays on schemes.

“After the failed budget promise of enhanced procurement of crops through a revised Minimum Support Price (MSP) formula in 2018-19, announcements made on February 1, 2019 will be the last opportunity for the government to woo a larger section of society through an interim budget, as against a vote-on-account, by altering both taxes and outlays on schemes,” said a report last week by JM Financial Institutional Securities.

With the general elections due in April-May, the government is looking at making available cheap loans and free accidental insurance to small businesses, a segment that bore the brunt of the demonetisation of November 2016, an official source here said, requesting anonymity.

The GST Council doubled the exemption threshold for small businesses from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 40 lakh. Besides, the threshold limit for eligibility under the GST Composition Scheme, which has been raised to Rs 1.5 crore from Rs 1 crore, is due to apply from the 2019-20 fiscal beginning April 1.

Such sops would follow major relief measures taken earlier this month to benefit the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector, currently plagued by liquidity and other issues.

According to former Jawaharlal Nehru University economics professor Arun Kumar, though it would be unethical to present an interim budget with major policy proposals, there is also the matter of the Presidential address to the Budget Session whereby the government makes its vision statement.

“If the budget proposes populist schemes, it will become difficult for the new government if it is led by another political party to withdraw these,” he explained.

According to noted economist Ashok Desai, who was Chief Consultant to the Finance Ministry (1991-93), the outgoing government cannot make any tax proposals or policy changes.

“With the elections around the corner, what the government can do is make incremental outlays for existing schemes, but cannot announce new schemes,” Desai said.

“In this situation, it is the states which have more liberty in announcing populist schemes through their state budgets,” he added.

Economist Nagesh Kumar felt there is a likelihood of higher outlays being proposed on schemes for the rural sector and small businesses, which “is not necessarily a bad thing” because it would boost consumption demand, especially at a time of slowdown in private investment.

Nasheman NewsTwitter India on Friday launched the second phase of its initiative #PowerOf18, that aims at encouraging the youth to contribute to the public debate and participate in civic engagement, on the occasion of ninth National Voters Day.

National Voters Day was started by the government in 2011 to encourage the young to vote.

The campaign roped in gold medalist boxer Nikhat Zareen to share her journey and message to the youth in an exclusive video on Twitter. 

In her message, Zareen noted that the youth of the country needs to understand the power of their votes, exercise it and be the change that #PowerOf18 can bring in for the country.

“As we move closer to the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Twitter is committed to providing a healthy platform to the youth that fosters civic conversation and democratic debate,” said Mahima Kaul, Head of Public Policy, Twitter India, in a statement. 

“Keeping this objective as core, we are excited to have launched into our second phase for #PowerOf18 today and are looking forward to ignite, enable and empower discussions amongst the youth, who are voters of today and the leaders of tomorrow,” Kaul added.

Twitter will also curate an exclusive digital panel around the theme of #PowerOf18 at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2019 on Friday.

Through the panel discussion, Twitter is aiming to bring together young, dynamic Indians for the world of literature to discuss the transformative power of civic action and the importance of making voice heard on its platform, and beyond, the statement said. 

Nasheman News :  Positive global markets and a strengthening rupee, with its third straight session of gains, aided the key equity indices to trade on a firm note on Friday afternoon.

The Sensex was up over 160 points and the Nifty was trading after noon just short of the 10,900 point mark.

The rupee opened at Rs 70.98 from its previous close of 71.07. It was, however, flat at 1.25 p.m.

All the sectors on the BSE traded in the green except realty, basic materials and consumer discretionary goods and services.

At 1.22 p.m., the S&P BSE Sensex traded 167.79 points up or 0.46 per cent at 36,362.89 after it opened higher.

It touched an intra-day high of 36,474.48 and a low of 36,216.41.

The broader Nifty advanced 41.30 points or 0.38 per cent at 10,891.10. 

However, US-China trade tensions seemed to resurface after reports suggest that US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Washington was “miles and miles” from a trade deal with Beijing.

Financial markets across the globe have been struggling owing to the trade tensions between the world’s largest economies. This was cited as one of the reasons by the International Monetary Fund while revising the global economic growth forecast. 

Stock-wise, the top gainer was Yes Bank, up 6.78 per cent after the appointment of a much-awaited new MD-cum-CEO.

Other top gainers were Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, Sun Phrama and Axis Bank.

In contrast, Hero MotoCorp, ICICI Bank, Asian Paints, Infosys and Tata Steel were the only losers among the 30 stocks on Sensex. 

Nasheman News : As Facebook turns 15 next month, its Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has once again defended the social media giant, saying the company is not selling its users’ data to anyone.

“We don’t sell people’s data, even though it’s often reported that we do,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“Clickbait and other junk may drive engagement in the near term, but it would be foolish for us to show this intentionally, because it’s not what people want,” he added.

The 1,000-word defence came after Facebook faced intense scrutiny over how it handled data of over two billion users amid several data scandals in recent years.

“Based on what pages people like, what they click on, and other signals, we create categories and then charge advertisers to show ads in that category,” he said.

“You have control over what information we use to show you ads, and you can block any advertiser from reaching you,” the Facebook CEO added.

In December, the social media giant said it never allowed its partners to access users’ private messages without their permission, after a New York Times report claimed that Facebook allowed large technology companies and popular apps like Netflix or Spotify to access its users’ personal information.

Zuckerberg said people “consistently tell us they don’t want to see this content”.

“Advertisers don’t want their brands anywhere near it. The only reason bad content remains is because the people and artificial-intelligence systems we use to review it are not perfect — and not because we have an incentive to ignore it. Our systems are still evolving and improving,” he added.

On collecting personal data, the CEO said: “There’s no question that we collect some information for ads but that information is generally important for security and operating our services as well.”

Facebook had said it never gave large tech companies access to people’s data without their permission as its integration partners “had to get authorisation from people”.

 Nasheman News : In a significant development, the CBI on Thursday lodged an FIR against former ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar, her husband Deepak Kochhar and industrialist V.N. Dhoot besides four companies, and raided four locations in Maharashtra in connection with a Rs 3,250-crore loan involving the Videocon Group and the ICICI Bank, informed sources said here.

The raids were conducted after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered an FIR on Tuesday naming former ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, her husband and NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd MD Deepak Kochhar, and Videocon Group MD Dhoot, and others in the case dating back to 2009-2012.

Interestingly, Chanda Kochhar’s role in the alleged irregularities committed has been highlighted in the CBI’s FIR ever since she assumed charge as the ICICI Bank MD and CEO on May 1, 2009.

Besides, four companies have also been named in the CBI FIR: NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd (NRL), Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd (SEPL), Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL) and Videocon Industries Ltd (VIL).

According to the FIR, they have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act as the accused allegedly “sanctioned loans to private companies in a criminal conspiracy with other accused to cheat ICICI Bank”.

The FIR comes in the wake of a preliminary enquiry (PE) instituted on March 31, 2018, against Deepak Kochhar, Videocon Group officials and others to determine whether any wrongdoing was involved in the sanctioning of loan by the ICICI Bank as part of a consortium, a senior CBI official said.

The raids were carried out simultaneously at the offices of the four companies in south Mumbai and one location belonging to Videocon in Aurangabad.

The Bureau initiated the PE after news reports raised questions about Videocon’s Dhoot allegedly providing crores to a firm promoted by Deepak Kochhar and a few relatives six months after the former’s Group received the Rs 3,250-crore loan.

The CBI probe said that a complaint was received regarding the Rs 3,250-crore loan to five of Dhoot’s companies by the ICICI Bank violating banking norms and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines.

As part of a quid pro quo, Dhoot invested Rs 64 crore in NRL and SEPL and also transferred SEPL to Deepak Kochhar’s Pinnacle Energy Trust through a circuitous route between 2010 and 2012.

Between June 2009 and October 2011, the ICICI Bank also sanctioned six high-value loans to different Videocon Group companies and on August 28, 2009, Rs 300 crore was sanctioned to VIEL in contravention of various rules, with Chanda Kochhar being part of the loan sanctioning committee.

She has been charged with criminal conspiracy to cheat the ICICI Bank, abusing her position. The loan was disbursed to VIEL on September 7.

The very next day, on September 8, 2009, through SEPL, VIEL transferred Rs 64 crore to Deepak Kochhar’s NRL by which it (NRL) acquired its first power plant.

“Thus, Chanda Kochhar got illegal gratification through her husband from VIL and Dhoot, for sanctioning Rs 300 crore to VIEL,” the CBI complaint said.

The CBI has also detailed the manipulations how the NRL and SEPL’s control was handed over to Deepak Kochhar, where the subsequent alleged frauds were committed.

In violation of several norms, the ICICI Bank also sanctioned various loans to Videocon Group companies which was utilised by them to repay their unsecured loans taken from VIL, while VIL took a loan to refinance its existing loans.

The loan sanction committees had ICICI Bank’s senior officials like Sandeep Bakshi, K. Ramkumar, Sonjoy Chatterjee, N.S. Kannan, Zarin Daruwala, Rajiv Sabharwal, K.V. Kamath and Homi Khusrokhan.

“These loans have turned NPAs resulting in wrongful losses to the ICICI Bank, and wrongful gains to the borrower/ accused persons. The role of these senior officials of the sanctioning committees may also be investigated,” said the CBI FIR.

It added that the ICICI Bank had released the security of Rs 50 crore in the form of FDR available for two of the borrowing (Dhoot) companies “without any justification”.

After Chanda Kochhar took charge at the bank’s helm, the credit limits and loans were sanctioned to Videocon Group companies, with her as part of the sanctioning committees.

Following the controversy over the alleged “conflict of interests” and “non-disclosure” in the loans sanctioned by the ICICI Bank, Chanda Kochhar, 56, quit her post seeking premature retirement on October 4, 2018.

Nasheman News : The government along with the RBI are soon expected to work out some relaxations in the central bank’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework for banks struggling with huge accumulated non-performing assets (NPAs or bad loans), a senior official said on Monday.

Currently, 11 banks with high bad debts are under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) PCA framework that prohibits them from further lending and the official said that the relaxation will be available only to those lenders that have shown substantial improvement in dealing with bad loans. 

With the aid of the relaxations, some of the banks with improved performance may be able to exit the PCA framework as early as next month, he added. 

The official pointed to the recapitalisation undertaken last month of state-run banks, ten of whom are under the PCA framework and said some banks have shown improvement both on recoveries as well as on de-risking their portfolios. 

The government last month obtained parliamentary sanction for issuing additional recapitalisation bonds of Rs 41,000 crore.

Tabling the supplementary demand for grants in this regard in the Lok Sabha last month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government will infuse Rs 83,000 crore in public sector banks (PSBs) in the remaining part of the fiscal taking the total recapitalisation of banks during the year to Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

Following this, Jaitley had told reporters here that he expected a few PSBs to exit the PCA framework. 

“Providing capital to better performing PCA banks to achieve 9 per cent capital to risk weighted asset ratio; 1.875 per cent Capital Conservation Buffer and the six per cent net NPA threshold, facilitating them to come out of PCA,” Jaitley said. 

Financial Services Secretary Rajeev Kumar told reporters here last month that the capital infusion will help at least four banks meet their regulatory capital norms. 

“We have made provisions to give capital to 4-5 banks depending on performance and on the Q2 and Q3 results. The figures will be decided later but there are chances that we equip at least 3 to 5 banks to meet the norms,” he said.

“The NPAs recognition is complete, recapitalisation is in full swing, it has been enhanced further, recovery is also in full swing, the last H1 (April-September 2018) recovery is to the tune of Rs 60,726 crore,” he had added.

Addressing an investors roundtable at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in Gandhinagar last week, new RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that after reaching a peak of 11.5 per cent in March 2018, the gross NPAs ratio of Banks improved to 10.8 per cent in September 2018. 

“As per the current assessment of the Reserve Bank, the ratio may further improve to 10.3 per cent by March 2019,” he added.

Nasheman News : Amid reports of en masse issue of prosecution notices to small companies, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Monday clarified that there had been no mass harassment by the Income Tax Department as it had filed only 1,400 prosecutions during the current fiscal for various offences under the Income Tax Act.

It said the Mumbai Income Tax TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) office had issued prosecution show-cause notices only in a limited number of big cases where over Rs 5 lakh of tax was collected as TDS from employees and the same was not deposited with the Income Tax Department in time.

The remarks came after Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram alleged that department’s “overzealousness” to prosecute taxpayers for failure to deposit TDS amounted to “tax terrorism”.

The CBDT said that some defaulter companies and vested interests were deliberately misleading the media to thwart action against themselves.

“Having deducted tax from employees and other taxpayers and not depositing the same in time in the government treasury is an offence punishable under the law. It also affects the interest of the employees from whose salary the tax has been deducted by the unscrupulous employers,” it said.

It added that in the last one month, only in 50 big cases prosecution notices had been issued, out of which, in 80 per cent of the cases the TDS tax default was above Rs 10 lakh and in 10 per cent cases, it was between Rs 5 and Rs 10 lakh. 

“In the remaining 10 per cent cases, TDS default is of more than Rs 1 crore… Prosecutions have also recently been launched against four big business houses where more than Rs 50 crore of tax was collected by them from the taxpayers and yet not deposited with the government in time,” it said.

The CBDT said that such “legal and rightful action” was being projected by the vested interests as if the department was going overboard to harass small employers. 

“It would be pertinent to note that in a country of 130 crore people where around six crore returns are filed every year, only a total of 1,400 prosecutions have been filed so far for various offences under the Income Tax Act during this financial year. 

“This, by any stretch of imagination, cannot be termed as mass harassment by the Income Tax Department. Therefore, to say that prosecution notices en masse have been sent to taxpayers for minor defaults is completely incorrect and misleading,” the CBDT added.