Singapore Headquartered Tata Communications maintained strong revenue growth across operations (for the quarter ended 31 December, 2011), with gross revenues increasing 19% year-on-year (YoY).
The main takeaways from the report are summarised below:
Core Business remains profitable
Neotel sees further enhancement in operating profitability
Focused cash management program on track
Capex programme is aligned to demand and is pursuing predictable & strategic growth-oriented opportunities
Commenting on the performance of Q3 FY2012, Mr. Vinod Kumar, CEO and MD, Tata Communications, said, “We are very pleased to report a healthy improvement in the operating performance of the business. Global voice has demonstrated continued improvement in volumes and revenues. The company’s global data business is scaling up as planned. Complementing our leadership in the enterprise data segment within India, we have been growing our international revenues as reflected in the enhanced uptake of our customised offerings and managed services.”For the quarter ended 31 December, 2011, consolidated gross revenues were at Rs. 36,041 million.
This is against Rs. 33,736 million in the previous sequential quarter and Rs. 30,180 million in the same quarter last year.
The Core Business accounted for Rs. 31,648 million – against Rs. 29,079 million in Q2 FY2012 and Rs. 28,535 million in Q3FY2011.
The Startup Business, primarily Neotel, posted revenues of Rs. 4,394 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2012.
This is against Rs. 4,657 million in Q2 FY2012 and Rs. 1,645 million in Q3 FY2011.
Read the detailed presentation of details from the report here.
CA Technologies today reported financial results for its third quarter of fiscal year 2012, which ended on 31 December, 2011.
Third Quarter FY12 vs. FY11 (in millions, except share data)
FY12
FY11
Percent Change
Percent Change CC**
Revenue
$1,263
$1,144
34%
24%
GAAP Income from continuing operations
$263
$196
34%
24%
Non-GAAP Income from continuing operations*
$319
$256
25%
18%
GAAP Diluted EPS from continuing operations
$0.54
$0.38
42%
39%
Non-GAAP Diluted EPS from continuing operations*
$0.65
$0.50
30%
28%
Cash Flow from continuing operations
$396
$492
(20%)
(19%)
* Non-GAAP income and earnings per share are non-GAAP financial measures, as noted in the discussion of non-GAAP results below. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to their comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the tables following this news release.
**CC: Constant Currency
The main takeaways from the report is summarised below:
Revenue $1.263 billion: Up 10% in constant currency and as reported.
GAAP EPS $0.54: Up 39% in constant currency and 42% as reported.
Non-GAAP EPS $0.65: Up 28 Percent in constant currency and 30%as Reported
Single license payment contributes 3 percentage points to revenue growth and $0.05 to GAAP and Non-GAAP EPS growth.
Cash flow from continuing operations $396 Million: Down 19 Percent in constant currency and 20% as reported.
Raises full year outlook for GAAP and non-GAAP EPS and adjusts revenue guidance to high end of range; maintains cash flow from continuing operations outlook.
Enhances capital allocation program, targeting return of $2.5 billion to shareholders through fiscal year 2014.
rara.com has just been launched for Singapore, Australia and Canada. It is an ad-free streaming music service that provides access to more than 10 million tracks at an introductory pricing of S$0.99 per month.
rara.com has been launched for Singapore, Australia and Canada.
rara.com is currently live in 20 countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
The service was launched a month ago across the USA, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Denmark,Finland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand.
rara.com’s global footprint is expected to double by the end of 2012.
Grammy award winning Imogen Heap has been named the first Associate Editor of rara.com, which has secured licensing from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Warner Music Group.
“Even if fans want to pay for the artists’ work legally it is often actually very difficult for various reasons. rara.com is a super easy service for everyone to use and I love the information on tracks and artists that rara.com gives you,” said Imogen Heap, Associate Editor on rara.com’s Music Advisory Board.Publishers and collection societies have also licensed the service internationally with Omnifone, whose MusicStation Platform powers rara.com.
HP will pre-load rara.com on HP PCs in Singapore, Australia and Canada.
The service is also available via an app on most Android mobile devices.
The new service was developed following an ICM Research (involving 1,000 adults) commissioned by rara.com which showed that at least 70% of consumers have not bought a digital music track in the past six months; and that 60% had never experienced any form of digital music.
rara.com hopes to attract this group of music consumers who have yet to convert to digital music, rather than wrestle away tech savvy music consumers already using existing online music stores such as Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s Cloud Player.
rara.com is also available on Android devices via an App.
A simple and beautiful user interface on a standard web browser removes the need to navigate or manage lists of digital media files.
rara.com also features a wide selection of curated music channels to suit the listerner’s mood.
Available at the touch of a button, the service makes playing music online as easy as switching on the radio or CDplayer.
rara.com users can also share music through Facebook and other social networks.
If you’re passionate about photography, why not submit your pictures to a stock photo agency? It might just make you enough money to pay for your next big lens.
iStockphoto workshop at the Canon Imaging Academy
Rather than let your photos collect dust in an old shoe box get lost and forgotten in the hard disk, try submitting them to a photo microstock agency.
The average contributor’s income may not be astounding, but it could be pocket money for that extra drink at the bar.
Canon Imaging Academy at Habour Front Place
I attended a workshop by Jumpei Matsuoka from iStockphoto last weekend at the Canon Imaging Academy (CIA) at Harbour Front Place.
CIA conducts photography courses, organises local outings and overseas trips, and provides free product training for photographers.
The 1-hour session was over-subscribed and the space had to be extended to accommodate almost forty photographers eager to find out how they could put their photos to work.
Jumpei Matsuoka, GM iStockphoto Japan
Matsuoka is the general manager for Japan and South Korea at iStockphoto.
He talked about how photography buffs can sign up as contributors on iStockphoto and make money from their passion for photography.
He also shared tips on what are the top selling images, the trends in the microstock industry, and how contributors can market themselves to potential customers.
iStockphoto is the world’s original source for user-generated, royalty-free stock images, media and design elements.
Its community of more than 7 million members enjoys access to a content collection approaching 10 million photographs, vector illustrations, flash, audio and video files on the site.
iStockphoto pays out US$1.9 million each week in royalty to its contributing artists.More than 50,000 files are approved each week from the site’s rapidly growing group of more than 125,000 contributing artists, with 5,500 submitting exclusively to iStockphoto.
Many iStockphoto artists earn a full-time living from iStockphoto, and many formerly traditional stock artists see micropayment stock imagery as an additional revenue channel.
I had a chat with Matsuoka after the session. The amicable fellow photographer conveyed a strong passion for photography and emphasised that a contributor should first and foremost possess this passion for photography.
With that as the backdrop, whatever income the contributor earns from submitting photos to a photo stock agency becomes an added bonus for the passion. On top of that, the contributor actually enjoys the work.
My own feel from speaking with Matsuoka is that if you’re thinking of becoming a contributing photographer, don’t quit your day job just yet.
The top six categories that bring in the most money:
Business
Lifestyle
Sports
Nature & Wildlife
Ideas
Travel
Start off small by submitting your shots to get a feel of the kind of income you can expect from the endeavour, and whether you have the eye to take photos that the agency will likely approve.
Photographers should know that the emphasis of stock photo agencies is to get photos that their paying subscribers can use – be it for business brochures or other publications.
It’s not so much the usual photo competition where there’s more emphasis on the artistic aspect of photography.
You would have heard wonderful success stories of a handful of contributors who earn big bucks from going full-time as stock photographers. But for the rest of us mere mortals, do test the waters first.
I have included some soundbites from Matsuoka about his perspectives on different aspects of stock photography. Check them out.
So dust out your old photos dig out those photos scattered all over your hard disks, and start shooting, you may just discover your ideal full-time job!
During the three major SMRT disruptions in December 2011, Singaporeans flocked to online sites to share updates, find news and exchange views.
Experian Hitwise has released data about Singapore Internet users during that period.
Top search terms containing SMRT (Comparison between 24 rolling weeks ending 10 December and 24 December)
Experian Hitwise found that top search variations used by Singaporeans include SMRT breakdown, SMRT twitter, SMRT CEO, SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa, SMRT news, SMRT Facebook and SMRT disruption.
Variations for the word “SMRT” on all search engines in Singapore saw an increase of 38% in related search clicks on week ending 24 December, the week after the disruption of train services.
“SMRT” remained the key search term used by Singaporeans within the two weeks. Fast moving event-related search terms from the two periods include specific person searches, SMRT CEO and SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa.
Websites receiving traffic from SMRT CEO related terms over 24 rolling weeks ending 24 December.
Ex-SMRT CEO, Saw Phaik Hwa, was widely discussed during the crisis.
Search terms around her name generated high online traffic in several social media websites and community forums including Facebook (17.98%) and Singapore HardwareZone Community (10.11%).
Top websites receiving traffic from terms in SMRT Disruption Period (Comparison between 24 rolling weeks ending 10 December and 24 December).
SMRT’s corporate site remained the top website receiving traffic from the search terms during and after the incident despite a 20% decline of search clicks share over the course.
However, traffic on social media and news websites increased the most over the course.
“The 10 most-watched YouTube videos of 2011 show that around the world, whatever language we speak, there are certain things that bring us all together around a computer screen or mobile phone — adorable babies, talented performers, and clever advertising.” — YouTube Trends Manager Kevin Allocca.
Globally, the most-watched YouTube community videos in 2011 are:
In a year when YouTube reached 48 hours of content uploaded every minute, YouTube viewers in Singapore couldn’t get enough of global smashes from LMFAO, Jennifer Lopez and Bruno Mars, as well as viral hits like the comedic tunings of “Nice Guys” (finish last), and local YouTube hit Yam Ah Mee.
In Singapore, the most watched music videos from major music labels in 2011 are:
1. LMFAO – Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock
What are the YouTube community videos that netizens in Singaporeans love most in 2011? Yes, other than that remix of Singaporean General Election sensation Yam Ah Mee. Ryan Higa’s “Nice Guys” tops the list.
In Singapore, the most-watched YouTube community videos of 2011 were:
TomTom study reveals the best and worst travel times on Singapore roads.
West and central parts of Singapore experience the largest traffic slowdowns during the morning peak hours.
TomTom did a study on driving times between the City and different suburbs during the peak hours.
The time taken to drive from each suburb to Raffles Place during peak hour in the morning (8-9am) was compared with the time taken during silent hours (1-5am) – when traffic was not a constraint to vehicle speed.
Traffic slowdowns during the evening peak hours in Singapore.
Similarly, the time taken to drive from Raffles Place to each suburb during the peak hour in the evening (5-7pm) was compared with the time taken during silent hours.
The spread of traffic degradation seems broader in the morning peak hours compared to the evening peak hours.
Clementi and Bukit Timah were found to suffer the greatest slow downs during the two peak hours compared to unobstructed driving timings between these two suburbs and the City.
New Zealand based Valerie Cross of TomTom Asia Pacific told me during her visit to Singapore that IQ Routes takes into consideration the different travel times for each road during different times of the day. “That’s because the actual travel speeds of each road varies throughout the day, and IQ Routes takes that into account.”Bishan and Jurong West were another two suburbs that experiences severe slowdowns during the peak hours.
For the evening peak hour, the overall spread of degradation was much smaller than during the morning peak hour.
Tampines is an interesting exception in that is the least affected by the morning peak hour, yet it was most severely affected during the evening peak hour.
There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to that.
TomTom derived the traffic data from the logs of portable navigation devices (PND) of its users when the latter connected their GPS devices to the Internet for updates.
The traffic data were extracted without any tags that could be used to identify the PND users.
Historic traffic data along roads are used during route planning by TomTom PNDs.
These historical traffic data is also used by TomTom to inject intelligence into the route planning algorithms of its PNDs, in the form of its IQ Routes feature.
Instead of planning routes based on jam-free traffic conditions and maximum road speed limits, IQ Routes take into consideration the historical and real travel timings of those roads considered for the routes for more accurate “fastest route” recommendations.
It’s as if the PND is a local choosing to drive further on a less congested road in order to avoid a 300m stretch that typically takes an hour due to peak hour traffic.
The next step beyond IQ Routes is live traffic information, which TomTom offers for 22 countries in the form of its HD Traffic feature.
Unfortunately, it is not available and for the moment, TomTom does not yet have any plans to introduce that to its Singapore users, because of the complexity of setting up its own live traffic sources and integration with other live traffic sources.
rara.com’s global footprint is expected to double by the end of 2012.
