asian defence

By Viola Gienger

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he’ll discuss moving forward on several agreements with the Indian government that would ease the South Asian nation’s path toward acquiring the latest defense technology.An accord to coordinate operations of communications equipment and ensure its security, and another that would allow cooperation on supply logistics are among the agreements Gates said he will pursue when he arrives in New Delhi tomorrow for a two-day visit. The defense chief, who will be making his first trip to India in almost two years, will meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Defense Minister A.K. Antony.

“Not getting these agreements signed is an obstacle to Indian access to the very highest level of technology” that they are interested in, Gates told reporters as on his plane to New Delhi today. “So we will be pursuing those agreements.”The accords would follow another sealed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visited India in July and won agreement on monitoring the use and any attempted resale of U.S. defense technology. That opened a door for $20 billion in defense and nuclear energy sales by meeting a requirement of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act of 1996.That so-called end-use monitoring agreement was “hugely important” to defense trade, Gates said. “Some of these other agreements would, I think, create even greater opportunities to expand that relationship.”

India is looking to build its defense industry by buying U.S. weapons, then learning how to make them at home to supply its own forces and, ultimately, to export supplies to other countries.

Foreign Investment

U.S. military weapons suppliers such as Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. also are lobbying India to increase the level of foreign investment allowed in its defense industry to 49 percent from the current 26 percent.That would let the contractors have more control over joint ventures while giving them greater incentive to transfer proprietary technology and participate in joint production.

Gates is seeking to increase U.S. ties with India, the world’s largest democracy and fastest-growing economy after China. President Barack Obama has called India a “critical partner” on issues from climate change to combating terrorism.Joint military exercises with the U.S. have increased steadily since 2002. India also has pledged $1.3 billion for development in Afghanistan, and participates in a multinational anti-piracy operation off the Horn of Africa.

Gates in a speech in Singapore last May described India, along with China, Russia and Indonesia, as “new and re-emerging centers of power.” The U.S. expects India, with its army of 1.4 million and an Air Force that includes 900 combat aircraft, to be “a partner and net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond,” Gates told an audience at an annual Asian security conference.India’s and Pakistan’s status as nuclear powers compound their political and military influence.

Pakistan’s National Command Authority cautioned in a Jan. 13 statement that India continues to “pursue an ambitious” program to build up its military, adding advanced weapons systems that may destabilize South Asia.

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, GlassFish Community Manager, explains that there is a lot of good things slated for Java EE 7. "The theme for Java EE 7 is "The Cloud"...we're talking about multi-tenancy, application versioning, support for NRDBMS stores but also about modularity, trying to leverage what will be done at the JavaSE level," he explains in his blog. Of course, all it's still early and a lot can change once the expert groups form and get to work. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be excited about!

For the first time, JavaOne went on the road and traveled to São Paulo, Brazil and Beijing, China. Developers were delighted to have the content, community, and the JavaOne experience come to them. Java Evangelist Arun Gupta captured the flavor of JavaOne Latin America in his blog. In China, Java Champion Adam Bien reported "I was warned that Chinese audience isn't interactive -- and it is absolutely not true!" Stay tuned for Duke packing his bags for Russia and India.

Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Taiwan-based HTC, which is aggressively marketing its Android phones in the U.S. market.

By Bruce Einhorn

During last year's World Series, many U.S. baseball fans had their first introduction to HTC (2498:TT), a Taiwanese company that makes smartphones. After years as an outsourcing specialist that focused on producing handsets and other electronic devices for such customers as Palm (PALM), HTC was pushing aggressively to emerge from the shadow of its well-known clients and establish a name brand of its own. As part of the campaign, HTC bought prominent space on Yahoo! (YHOO) and YouTube (GOOG), as well as a spot during a Yankees-Phillies game. The tag line of the campaign: "Quietly Brilliant."




"We do great things in a humble way," explained Chief Executive Peter Chou in an October interview at HTC headquarters at an industrial park near Taiwan's international airport. "We let our actions speak louder than our words."

HTC will need to start speaking up now because the company is getting a very different sort of publicity. On Mar. 2, the top name in smartphones, Apple, launched an offensive against its Taiwanese rival, filing patent infringement lawsuits in U.S. federal court in Delaware and also with the U.S. International Trade Commission. HTC "manufactured, imported, and sold…without license, many technologies developed by Apple and protected by patents issued to and owned by Apple and its fully-owned subsidiaries," Apple alleged in its complaint to the ITC.



WINDOWS MOBILE ASSOCIATION HURT HTC

By Bruce Einhorn

Dell (DELL) is fed up with losing ground to Acer (2353:TT). Last year Dell lost its spot as the world's second-largest computer maker to its Taiwanese rival, lagging behind Acer in market share for the first time ever. As of the fourth quarter of 2009, Dell had just 12.4% of the global market, according to market research firm IDC, compared with 13.4% for Acer and 21% for Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

While Acer executives, including Chairman J.T. Wang, are already talking about how they're going to close the gap with HP, Dell isn't giving up on recovering its No. 2 spot, says Stephen J. Felice, Singapore-based president for the Dell division focused on consumers and small and midsize businesses. And Dell hopes to claw back lost ground without sacrificing profitability. "We are not ceding that second place," he said on a conference call with reporters on Feb. 19. "We see a way to get back to leadership position but will do it in a more measured way."

Dell executives want to avoid following in the footsteps of Acer, which has grown largely because of its strength in low-cost netbooks and other inexpensive computers. "Acer has had a focus on low-end products, but the operating margin they work at is substantially lower than ours," Felice said. "We don't think that's the right strategy for our shareholders."

PRESSURE ON PROFIT MARGINS

Acer's share gains aren't helping Dell investors much either. Dell's fourth-quarter profit dropped 4.8%, to $334 million, the company reported on Feb. 18. Dell's gross margin of 17.4% was also below the 18% expected by analysts, Bloomberg News reported. And the profit picture isn't likely to improve soon. Margins "will be under pressure short term with increased competition from the likes of Acer and, to a lesser degree, Hewlett-Packard," Ashok Kumar, managing director at Northeast Securities, told Bloomberg.

Dell's comeback strategy hinges partly on China and India. The company had sales of about $4 billion from China, according to Felice, making China Dell's second-largest market, behind the U.S. Sales grew 81% in China, which now accounts for 7.5% of the total. Last November, Dell launched its first smartphone, the Mini 3, with state-owned China Mobile (941:HK), the largest cellular operator in the country. The company, which also began selling the Mini 3 in Brazil, plans to launch it in the U.S. with AT&T (T) this year. "We are in very early stages" of the smartphone business, Felice said. "But we have had good sales results in China."

In PCs, Dell's improving Chinese sales haven't translated into better market share. According to Felice, Dell got a big boost from the Chinese government's stimulus package, which promoted purchases of computers. "The stimulus has helped," said Felice. "A lot of it was aimed at small businesses," he said. That's a segment of the industry where Dell has traditionally been strong. Dell's market share in China for the fourth quarter of 2009, however, fell to 8.2%, compared with 9.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008. Dell was the only one of the three biggest vendors in China to lose share: Lenovo grew from 30.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 33.4% in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to IDC data; HP went from 10.9% at yearend 2008 to 14.3% in the fourth quarter of last year.

According to Roger K.Lay

As the balance of power in many domains shifts from the U.S. to China, computer makers are also refocusing their strategies to include a larger China component. China is critical as both a market and a supply base. And Asian vendors have become serious rivals to the top U.S. companies, many of which are beset by persistent management dramas and palace intrigue.

For years, the equation was clear: Large PC brands were American, the big makers were Taiwanese, and China was, at best, a low-cost production site. Today several of the former Taiwanese makers have become international brands, and mainland China has risen to become a full player as both customer and supplier. The Chinese leader, Lenovo Group, is the fourth-largest PC vendor in the world. No. 2 is Taiwan's Acer.

So who's winning? My call is that the Asian brands have a long-term advantage. Top-ranked Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and No. 3 Dell (DELL) share characteristics absent in the Asian vendors: Both face various legal troubles and leadership turmoil. Both have seen a string of executive and board departures. Dell has been able to settle most, but not all, of its lawsuits. HP faces yet another regulatory probe over its split with former chief Mark Hurd. Both continuously bleed high-level talent. Meanwhile, Acer, Lenovo, and Asus, another Taiwanese firm, now in the sixth spot, slowly and steadily build their international presence.

The U.S. and China represent big battlegrounds for all these vendors, must-wins in the market share wars.

ACROSS THE STRAIT