Beetel Teletech, part of India’s Bharti Enterprises that controls top mobile carrier Bharti Airtel (BRTI.NS), unveiled a tablet computer priced at 9,999 rupees ($220) on Wednesday.

The 7-inch tablet, branded Beetel Magiq, uses Google’s (GOOG.O) Android operating system and supports both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, Beetel said in a statement.

Beetel is one of the largest makers of fixed-line phones in India. A company spokesman said China’s Huawei HWT.UL was their manufacturing partner for the tablet.

India is the world’s second-biggest and the fastest-growing market for mobile phones, although computer penetration is still low.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) began iPad sales in India in January this year, while Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) launched its Galaxy Tab in India in November last year.

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Best Buy Stuck With TouchPads

Best Buy is sitting on a boatload of 200,000 HP Touchpads and wants to send them back to HP.

According to Allthingsd, Best Buy stocked its warehouses with around 270,000 HP Touchpad tablets. However, the retailer has been unable to sell the tablets and has only sold at most 25,000, even with a $100 discount, so Best Buy is requesting that HP take back all of the unsold devices.

Furthermore, it is being said that things are so bad that HP EVP Todd Bradley might have to go to Best Buy’s headquarters and plead with executives to exercise patience. It appears that the Touchpad is suffering from poor sales in many stores across the country, with Wal-Mart also said to be an unhappy camper.

Update…HP will stop making the HP Touchpads…….

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iPad Rivals Have Better Chance In Europe

Would-be rivals to Apple’s iPad have a better chance in Europe than they do in the United States, but they need to drop prices fast to grasp the opportunity, IT research firm Forrester said on Tuesday.

Apple’s relatively small retail presence in Europe — with 52 stores compared with 238 in the United States — offers a chance to the likes of Samsung, Acer and Research in Motion, Forrester said.

But their prices cannot yet compete with Apple, which has far larger scale in the tablet market and an efficient supply chain. Forrester said emerging challengers from China and Taiwan would likely step in soon with cheaper offerings.

“There is this opportunity for iPad challengers, but the competition is very fragmented. Competing with Apple will require a different approach from what we’ve seen so far,” said analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, the author of the Forrester report.

Apple still has the tablet-computer market almost to itself after launching the iPad a year and a half ago. It has sold close to 30 million iPads, whose prices start at about $500.

Forrester expects Apple to sell 80 percent of all consumer tablets in the United States and 70 percent in Europe this year.

It expects 2011 worldwide tablet sales to reach 48 million units, with half of those sold in the United States, 30 percent in Europe, 15 percent in Asia and 5 percent in Latin America.

Forrester surveyed almost 14,000 online adult consumers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Britain, and also interviewed product strategists from manufacturers, telecommunications operators and retailers.

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India Wants To Monitor Twitter & Facebook

India’s Communications Ministry has received a request from the Home Ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to organize attacks.

The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to expand the scope of its online surveillance for national security purposes.

Telecommunications service providers in India provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communications on their network, including communications from social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, in accordance with their license agreements, Milind Deora, the minister of state for communications and IT, told Parliament, according to the country’s Press Information Bureau.

But there are certain communications which are encrypted, Deora said Friday.

The government did not provide details of what encrypted data they would like to have access to. A spokesman for the home ministry said on Monday that additional
information can only be provided in Parliament while it is in session.

Under new rules to the country’s IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.

Most companies, however, are not willing to share information with law enforcement agencies unless they have a court order.

Twitter states in its guidelines for law enforcement that “non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we have received a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process document.”

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Apple Tech Support Satisfaction Plummets

Apple customers are increasingly unhappy with the company’s technical support, which could affect the firm’s bottom line in the future, a researcher said today.

Although Apple continues to outperform rival computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell in overall customer satisfaction with technical support, in several areas Apple’s slippage over the last year is alarming, said Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocalabs, a Minneapolis-based company that surveys consumers after they’ve contacted customer or technical support.

“Apple is still definitely ahead of its competition, but what we are highlighting are deeper metrics that are showing negative trends,” said Leppik. “Customers are upset with the automated part of support calls to Apple, and that might be trickling into higher metrics.”

Those higher metrics Leppik referenced include the likelihood customers will return for another purchase in the future, or continue to recommend Apple products to friends and family.

In the past 12 months, consumers who said they were “very satisfied” with Apple’s technical support dropped 15 percentage points, from 73% at the mid-point of 2010 to 58% halfway through 2011, said Leppik.

The primary cause of the tumble was a turnabout in customers’ opinion of the automated section of their calls to Apple. In the last year, the percentage of those who said they were very satisfied with the quality of Apple’s automation fell 13 points to 24%. That’s a new low for Apple in Vocalabs surveys, and a whopping 28 points off the peak of 52% a year-and-a-half ago.

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Poor Get Online With Cloud Phone

Start up firm Movirtu has made plans to help 3 million or more people in poor countries use mobile services by giving them personal phone numbers, not phones.

Working with a U.N.-affiliated initiative called Business Call to Action (BCtA), Movirtu will offer the numbers, which it calls mobile identities, through commercial carriers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. People in those countries who typically borrow phones from others will be able to log into the carrier’s network and use their own prepaid minutes and bits of data. The service is called Cloud Phone, though it operates within a carrier’s own infrastructure rather than on the Internet as a classic cloud service would.

Having a personal mobile identity can save users money in two ways, according to Ramona Liberoff, executive vice president of marketing, strategy and planning at Movirtu. First, they can use mobile services without buying a phone, which is a luxury even at US$15 or $20 for people making $1 or $2 per day. Second, the cost of prepaid service from a carrier typically is less than what consumers in those countries pay someone to borrow a phone, she said.

Though it’s customary in many of these countries to lend a phone to someone in need, the borrower is also expected to pay the lender for the usage. The average savings from using regular prepaid service instead is estimated at about $60 per year, Liberoff said.

The service will help people to use mobile banking, insurance and farming assistance services as well as make phone calls, Liberoff said.

Some of these services currently can only be delivered to individuals and not to someone sharing a phone. Personal mobile identities could be a boon to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that want to use mobile technology. “In many cases, there are great NGO programs that can’t reach 80 percent of their base,” because those people don’t have their own phones, Liberoff said.

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ISPs Close Internet Gap

Broadband speeds on average are within 80 percent of what major Internet service providers advertise, an appreciable increase from two years ago, according to a government study.

The Federal Communications Commission studied cable, DSL and fiber-to-the-home services at 13 top U.S. broadband providers.

The FCC found Verizon Communications Inc’s fiber network was best at meeting or exceeding advertised maximum download speeds, while Cablevision Systems Corp came in last place.

Overall, the numbers were a big boost from 2009, when data indicated download speeds were often about half of Internet service providers’ (ISP) maximum advertised speeds.

“Most major ISPs are providing service close to what they’re advertising. This represents a significant improvement over the findings from two years ago when we first shined a light on this issue,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, unveiling the study’s findings at a Best Buy Co store in the District of Columbia.

During peak consumer usage hours when networks are busiest, actual download speeds varied from 114 percent to 54 percent of advertised speed among the different ISPs, the FCC said.

The complete findings of the report, its raw data and an FCC-prepared guide for consumers will be made available online. The FCC says the data will help consumers decide which Internet speed, service and provider best meet their needs.

“This report pretty well dispels the myth … that there’s a huge gap between advertised and actual speeds, and in fact we do pretty well here in the United States,” said Richard Bennett, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Not everyone was impressed with the study’s findings.

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Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?

Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.

Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.

The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.

Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.

“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”

Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.

But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.

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Alibaba Debuts Smartphone Running Its Cloud OS

Alibaba Group unveiled its first self-developed mobile operating system and smartphone on Thursday in a bid to capture a slice of China’s burgeoning mobile Internet market.

The cloud computing-based operating system, Aliyun, will run the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone, to be launched at the end of July in 10 colors, said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, a unit of Alibaba Group.

A tablet PC running the Aliyun OS, which is based on a customized Android system, will also be launched in China by the end of the year, Wang told reporters after a presentation in Beijing.

Handset manufacturer Tianyu will manufacture the K-Touch as well as the tablet, Wang said.

“Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile OS, one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the Internet has to offer, right in the palm of their hand, and the cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that,” said.

The Aliyun operating system will feature cloud services such as email, Internet search and support for web-based applications. Users will not be required to download or install applications onto their mobile devices, Wang said.

Alibaba Cloud plans to integrate the operating system with other devices including mobile phones with larger screens and tablet computers in the coming months.

Wang said the company was looking to launch tablet computers running Aliyun by the end of the year.

The company is currently in talks with Qualcomm Inc to develop a lower-end chipset optimized to run Aliyun OS in lower-end mobile phones, Wang said. The K-Touch phones use a high-end chipset from Nvidia Corp for crisp display of intricate games.

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T-Mobile Will Offer Unlimited Data Plans

Wireless telecom firm T-Mobile USA said it will begin offering unlimited data service plans, in a move aimed at snagging customers of bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc which have discontinued offering such plans.

T-mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, said the new plans will become available from July 24. The unlimited plans will be available with a two-year agreement for new and existing customers.

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, said earlier in July it will stop offering unlimited data service plans, meaning higher prices for heavy users of services such as mobile Web surfing.

AT&T had stopped offering unlimited data services last year.

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