Today in Tech: Gartner on Indian PC market; IBM's Watson in your pocket

Gartner on Indian PC market Gartner's latest report on PC market shows how fickle the vendor rankings can be in a highly commoditized market. Lenovo is the biggest gainer in terms of share, and that primarily came thanks to a government order from Tamil Nadu. The pie was 2.9 million units in Q2 2012, and grew 17% from same period last year.

“Consumer PC sales grew 24 percent sequentially, which emphasizes the fact that media tablets are not yet cannibalizing the PC market in India like in the West. Consumer growth is being primarily being driven by entry level products. Vendors such as HP, Lenovo, Asus and Samsung registered more than 50 percent growth in the consumer segment," Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst at Gartner said in a press statement yesterday.

Here's how they stack up now.

IBM's Watson in your pocket
Bloomberg reports that the capabilities that helped Watson beat the champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” could be a part of your phone, a super charged version of Apple's Siri personal assistant. "A farmer could stand in a field and ask his phone, “When should I plant my corn?” He would get a reply in seconds, based on location data, historical trends and scientific studies," the report says.

When Watson won Jeopardy! in February last year, no one was under the illusion that it was developed just to win a game. It had other applications. Here are two videos from IBM that time

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI-M7O_bRNg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQmuETLeQcg[/youtube]

Over the last year, we heard about its applications in finance and medicine. (Here's a blog that has some interesting insights on Watson. It's maintained by Stephen Baker, who wrote a book on the big game. His earlier book Numerati, on analytics, is a great read too. Numerati expanded on a cover story Baker had written for Businessweek: How Math Will Rock Your World)

But the reason why Watson might get into your pocket has to do with its energy consumption. “The power it takes to make Watson work is dropping down like a stone,” Bernie Meyerson, IBM’s vice president of innovation told Bloomberg.

Also of interest

• Google lands patent for automatic object recognition in videos, leaves no stone untagged: Engadget
• Amazon’s Kindle-Exclusive Books Surge Past 100 Million Mark: WSJ Blogs
• Tech Mahindra in talks to buy Bharti arm Comviva Technologies for around Rs 750 crore: Economic Times

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