Tata Motors announces new IMPACT design language for its upcoming passenger vehicles

Tata Motors is making appreciable progress in terms of design, something that’s very evident with the Zest, Bolt and more than ever with the new Zica. The company plans to transform its image of a maker of average, and sometimes boring looking cars to one that makes exciting cars. In that context, the company today announced its new IMPACT Design language for its upcoming passenger vehicles. The recently unveiled ZICA, that we test drove a few weeks back is the first new product under this design language. According to an official release by the company “the IMPACT design forms the over-arching design brand which stands for ‘Immediate IMPACT at first sight and lasting IMPACT over time.’

In case of most reputed international carmakers, the family look of the cars is expressed by a design philosophy which more or less defines how the cars from the stable will look like. For example, Hyundai has tasted immense success with its Fluidic Sculpture design philosophy; another example would be Ford’s Kinetic Design philosophy. According to the brand, the ZICA truly embodies the IMPACT Design. It distills the fine points of auto design with styling and lines that accentuate modern India and its global citizens.

Here’s what Tata Motors have to say about the definition of their new IMPACT design language.

It is after keeping the media-saturated customer in mind that a new design language had to be created. Something that could break the clutter and reinvent the wheel every time it was applied. And thus, the IMPACT design philosophy was created.

IMPACT Design further distills the design elements that can be expected from all Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles. It will be achieved through key design elements on the Exterior and Interior.

The Exteriors design will be defined through ‘EXciting’, ‘EXpressive’ and ‘EXtraordinary’ features:

1. Exciting architecture and pleasing proportions will be standard e.g. best in segment size & location of the wheels, perfectly proportioned cabin to body ratio and hood to cabin relationship
2. Expressive surfaces and graphics e.g. front face framed by the Humanity Line; dynamism amplified by the Slingshot line; movement created by the Diamond Window
3. Extraordinary: Details inspired by Indian Architecture

According to Mr. Pratap Bose, Head, Design, Tata Motors, “You can either win or lose a potential customer within the first 20 seconds of them seeing a car. However, the customer stays with you based on the long-term experience they have with the product or service. IMPACT DESIGN is exactly about an Immediate and a Lasting Impact, Design has in our lives, and environment. From ‘INtelligent’ use of space, ‘INviting’ interiors and ConnectNext features that make you feel ‘INtouch’ with the world inside to EXpressive, EXciting’, and EXtraordinary exterior features. With the ZICA we have started this journey.”

According to Mr. Mayank Pareek, President, Passenger Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors, “Today, the automakers are developing innovative technologies to cater to the needs of the new generation of customers. Design is among the key factors for car purchase decisions. Tata Motors recognizes this and presents IMPACT Design – as a key focus for the company’s passenger vehicle strategy.  The new, youthful, energetic and bold character of the passenger vehicles by Tata Motors is sure to make a lasting impact on our customers and on the Indian roads.”

While all of that sounds good and a tad optimistic in out opinion, the Zica does look like an evolved product in terms of design. Would you agree that the ZICA is a true embodiment of Tata Motors’ IMPACT design philosophy? Do share your views with us via comments or through one of our social channels.

Bike sales December 2015: Honda 2 wheelers sell 306,779 units; captures 25% market share

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) registered overall sales of 306,779 units for the month of December 2015, down from 3,48,737 units in December 2014. Out of the current numbers, scooter sales stood at 198,332 units while motorcycle sales stood at 92,380 units. Export sales came to 16.067 units for the same period. The market share claimed by Honda for December 2015 in the domestic market is 25%, while the domestic as well as export market combined market share stood 22%.

Till December 2015 of the current fiscal year, HMSI sold a total of 3,354,831 units. Of these, scooter sales stood at 2,079,833 units while motorcycle sales accounted for 1,125,678 units. Export sales stood at 149,320 units in the current fiscal during April to December, 2015. The market share claimed by Honda in the domestic market is 26% while the Domestic and export market share accounted for 24% of the overall market share.

Honda 2 wheelers brought in a street naked sports bike in the form of the CB Hornet 160R – one of the first mainstream bikes in India to meet BS-IV emission norms. The motorcycle will be available for sale in 2 variants with the price starting from Rs 79,900 (Ex-Showroom, New Delhi).

The company also came out with an exclusive booking app available on the android as well as the iOS platform known as the CB Hornet 160R. Honda advanced the CB Hornet 160R’s availability from the planned 21 cities to 53 cities as the number of downloads crossed 40,000 mark.

Honda also went on to win 3 awards in December 2015 namely the manufacturer of the year 2 wheeler, motorcycle of the year up to 160 cc, and the motorcycle of the Year up to 110 cc all under the NDTV Car & Bike awards 2016.

Volkswagen Gave An Apology Sandwich With The Reveal Of Its Budd-e Concept Car In-Between

Volkswagen’s head brand ambassador Herbert Diess quickly got the emissions fiasco apologies out of the way on stage at CES on Tuesday and then unveiled two connected and all-electric concept cars of the future, the e-Golf Touch and the much-anticipated Budd-e microbus.

Diess was in the running for VW CEO shortly after Martin Winterkorn resigned in fall 2015, amidst a revelation the German car manufacturer had deliberately placed emissions-cheating software in more than 500,000 vehicles sold in the United States. Matthias Muller is now the company’s CEO.

The U.S. government filed a lawsuit against Volkswagen on Monday in Detroit, Michigan. Diess took to the stage at the Cosmopolitan’s Chelsea Theater in Las Vegas this evening to address the situation.

“The current issue for diesel engines is certainly nothing to be proud of. We disappointed our customers and the American people. We are truly sorry and I apologize. We are disappointed that this could happen within the company we love. I assure you, we are doing everything we can to make things right. And we are working night and day to find effective technical remedies for our customers and the authorities worldwide. In total, up to 11 million VW group cars are affected by this issue. For the large majority of these cars, we have already worked out approved solutions. In Europe, this holds true for about 8.5 million affected cars. Resolutions have been ratified by the European authorities and we will start to repair these cars this month. Most of them will be fixed within 2016. Here in the US, the set of regulations is different compared to Europe. It’s more demanding due to nitrogen oxide and less demanding due to CO2. We’re working hard to create an effective package for the US authorities.”

Diess then proceeded to wow the crowd with the concept cars – both of which focus heavily on some digital touches Volkswagen hopes will give the company a good foothold in the connected car race.

The Budd-e, a pint-sized version of the company’s legendary hippie van looked almost Tron-like as it glowed in the dark onstage – as if to let us know we’re now in the future. It also stayed true to what seems to be the automotive theme of CES this year – connection to everything on command. The Budd-e will let you know if a visitor is at the front of your house, what’s in your fridge and “make sure your robot cleaner is ready” before you get home, according to one LG exec who came onstage during the presentation.

The car is also equipped to handle package pickup and delivery with a built-in drop box in the back where a delivery person can drop off and pick up packages wherever your car is parked. 

Budd-e also seems to be adherent to “the force.” The handleless car doors will automatically open at the command of your voice. Diess demonstrated this onstage as the driver inside said politely, “Hello Budd-e, please open the passenger door.” 

The e-Golf Touch is an updated version of the Golf R Touch concept car Volkswagen showcased last year. But this one is electric, comes with a 9.2-inch touchable dashboard resembling an iPad, and is compatible with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and MirrorLink.

One of the cool things about the e-Golf is the personalization. Different drivers can set preferred driving features in the cloud and upload them onto the tablet dashboard.

Gestures like the waving of your hand can control things like volume and the e-Golf is WiFi enabled and equipped with phone charging outlets in the front and rear seats of the car. Should no Internet connection be available, the car is also equipped with a USB Type-C port.

The presentation also touched on a strong theme among many car manufacturers at CES this year – automated driving. “Volkswagen is rapidly entering the digital world, utilizing machine learning and mapping,” Diess told the crowd.

Note VW bought HERE, one of the largest digital mapping companies, last summer.

The company also unveiled a partnership with Mobileye, a vision technology company with an advanced driver assistance system that helps boost cars to a near self-driving experience.

“The human eye is really complicated and it’s really hard to replicate,” Co-founder and CTO of Mobileye Ammon Shashua said onstage at the VW event. “In the future we’ll live in a digital world…the camera will continue to be a critical sensor.”

A big theme for both cars was clearly about connection, but the Budd-e was definitely about the design. The car and the home cross-pollinate well in VW’s vision for the future Internet of Things, be it on the road or in the cloud and Volkswagen’s CEO indicated that these futuristic rides “could be a reality by the end of the decade.”

“The car of the future will make a difference. It will make our world a better place and Volkswagen will make sure most people can afford it,” Diess said.

He ended his speech with a return to what his company plans to do to make things right with the U.S. market. “We’re doing everything we can to work on the current diesel issue in the U.S.,” he said. “We’re working very hard to do so and confident we will provide solutions very soon.”

India’s mobile phone market reaches an important milestone of 1 billion subscribers

The mobile subscriber base in India has crossed a billion mark for the first time, and reached 1003.49 million subscribers. India is second only to China to cross this major milestone in world of mobile phones. However, number of active wireless subscribers was marked to be 902.26 million at end of October 2015.
In the month of October, a total of 6.83 million mobile subscribers were added by the telcos. Out of the 1003.19 million mobile subscribers, 578.11 million were urban subscribers, while 425.38 million were rural subscribers. Wireline subscriber base continued to decline, and dropped to 25.85 million. During the month of October, 2015, 5.11 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

Operator-wise subscriber base (in millions)

1. Airtel – 237.97
2. Vodafone – 189.47
3. Idea – 167.28
4. Reliance Communications – 111.41
5. Aircel – 84.60
6. BSNL – 80.42
7. TATA – 60.84
8. Telenor – 48.71
9. MTS – 8.26
10. Videocon – 7.84
11. MTNL – 3.60

During the month of October 2015, Bharti Airtel added the maximum number of new subscribers (2.76 million) followed by Vodafone (adding 1.3 million), and Reliance Communication (adding 1 million). Both, BSNL and Idea, added 0.72 million, while Telenor added 0.93 million subscribers in the October of 2015. On the contrary, Tata lost over 1.17 million subscribers during the month.

The overall tele-density in India increased from 80.98 at the end of Sep-15 to 81.44 at the end of Oct-15. While urban tele-density marginally declined from 152.76 at the end of September 2015 to 152.58 by the end of October 2015. The rural tele-density increased from 48.66 at the end of September 2015 to 49.37 by the end of October 2015.

The broadband subscriber base increased from 120.88 million at the end of September 2015 to 125.22 million at the end of October 2015. Out of these 125.22 million broadband subscribers, 108.48 million were wireless broadband users. Bharti Airtel (29.03 million), Vodafone (24.48 million), Idea Cellular(20.28 million), BSNL (19.43 million) and Reliance communications Group (11.47 million) were the top five broadband service providers in the country.

Harley Davidson withdraws SuperLow and FatBoy Special from the Indian market

Harley Davidson India recently unveiled the 2016 line-up of motorcycles with upgrades for most of the products on sale under a new theme known as Dark Custom. However, what one didn’t notice that Harley Davidson also withdrew two of its models from the Indian market namely the SuperLow and the FatBoy Special.

Priced around Rs.6 lakh and Rs.15.5 lakh (Ex-Showroom) respectively, the SuperLow and FatBoy Special were withdrawn from the Indian market reportedly due to the low sales cost. Even though both the models were available in India for an estimated 3 years, they still didn’t manage to gain popularity. They were brought to the Indian shores through the CKD route.

The SuperLow is powered by an 883 cc V twin air cooled engine that produces 70 Nm of peak torque at 3,750 rpm. The V twin engine is paired to a 5 speed transmission. The SuperLow gets a decent share of chrome bits that makes its appearance as good as the bigger Harleys in the segment.

The FatBoy Special, on the other hand is powered by a 1690cc air cooled engine that produces 132 Nm of peak torque at 3,250 rpm. This engine was mated to a 6 speed gearbox. The sales of the FatBoy Special were so low that Harley couldn’t manage to sell even a single unit of the motorcycle in the last few months. Another possible reason for the low sales of these bikes could be the introduction of the Street 750 which is a comparatively affordable model and took the place of being the most reasonably priced motorcycle from the U.S. based manufacturer.

What in your opinion would be the ideal choice for a bike with the SuperLow and FatBoy Special being discontinued in India by Harley Davidson? Will Harley replace these models with something new?

Three variants of ASUS ZenWatch 2 launched in India, price starts from Rs. 11,999

After the recent launch of the Motorola Moto 360 (2nd Gen) in India, ASUS has launched its second Android Wear-based smartwatch in India. The ASUS ZenWatch 2, which was unveiled during Computex 2015 in June, will be available exclusively through Flipkart with a starting price of Rs. 11,999. The smaller screen variant is priced at Rs. 11,999, while the larger screen variants are priced at Rs. 14,999.

ASUS ZenWatch 2 Specifications

• 1.63-inch AMOLED display (WI501Q), 320×320 pixels (278ppi), 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3
• 1.45-inch AMOLED display (WI502Q), 280×280 pixels (273ppi), 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3
• Android Wear v5.1.1 Lollipop
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, 512MB RAM, and 4GB internal storage
• Bluetooth 4.1 with LE, Wi-Fi b/g, IP67-certified with dust and water-resistant
• Accelerometer and Gyrometer
• 300mAh (WI501Q) / 400mAh (WI502Q) battery
• 49.6 x 40.7 x 9.4 ~ 10.9 mm (WI501Q); 45.2 x 37.2 x 10.4 ~ 11.8 mm (WI502Q)

The ZenWatch 3 is a second-generation Android Wear-based smartwatch, and comes in three colours; Blue, Khaki, and Taupe. The Blue and Taupe variants have 1.63-inch AMOLED displays with 320 x 320 pixels resolution, while the Taupe colour variant sports a 1.45-inch display (280 x 280 pixels), and is suited for women. There’s a 300 mAh battery in the 1.45-inch screen variant, while the 1.63-inch variants have a 400 mAh battery.

It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, and runs Android Wear 5.1 Lollipop. As most smartwatches these days, it is IP67 water and dust resistant, and feature Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. The ASUS ZenWatch 3 competes with the Motorola Moto 360 (2nd Gen) and the LG Watch Urbane, both of which are comparatively priced quite high, but it misses out on a heart rate monitor

64GB Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 sells out in under a minute

Last month, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 was unveiled. The 7.9-inch slate was originally offered with 16GB of native storage, powered by Android. This model is priced at 999 Chinese Yuan, or $156 USD. This morning, at 10 am sharp in China, Xiaomi released the 64GB variant of the tablet which is offered with Android, or Windows 10 inside. Both models are priced at 1299 Chinese Yuan, or $203 USD.

If you weren't quick enough to score a 64GB Mi Pad 2, the bad news is that the tablet is now sold out in that configuration. It took less than a minute for all of the inventory to be sold in a flash sale. There were a few complaints made to the company's Tablet page on Weibo, but there isn't much that can be done except to wait for the company to churn out more units.

In case you haven't had time to study the specs, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 keeps the 7.9-inch screen employed on the original Mi Pad, and even the 1536 x 2048 resolution is the same. Instead of the Tegra K1, which powered the OG model, the sequel has the Intel Atom X5-Z8500 chipset under the hood, with a quad-core 2.2GHz CPU. 2GB of RAM is inside along with 64GB of native storage. An 8MP camera is on back featuring an f/2.0 aperture, and the 5MP front-facing camera handles selfies and video chats. A 6190mAh battery powers the unit, and the slate features a Type-C USB port. Fast charging allows you to top off the battery quickly.

The quick sellout of the 64GB Mi Pad 2 will surely lead to the old glass half full/half empty game. Some will say that exceptional demand led to the quick sell out, while others will say that Xiaomi didn't produce enough units. Regardless of the reason behind it, the headlines say that the 64GB version of the Mi Pad 2 is sold out and that will look good for the company, which has uncharacteristically stumbled around a bit this year.

The 64GB Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 launched today, and sold out in less than a minute

Sony extends Marshmallow Concept trial into New Year, releases 6.0.1

Sony had been planning to bring its Sony Concept Android Marshmallow beta to a close later this week. However, the company has decided to continue the program into the New Year, following a very positive experience with testers.

The additional time is certainly good news for the tens of thousands of program participants and also means that Sony will have some additional time to collect more feedback and tweak its Marshmallow experience. There is a drawback here though, as the company doesn’t seem to know exactly when it plans to release an official Marshmallow build to its broader consumers. An update for the Z5 range had been expected in January.

                                          

However, the final release may be based on the slightly newer Android 6.0.1 version, as Sony has also just begun rollout out this software to its Concept beta testers. The new MMB29M.Z1.3021-somc version includes the 200 new emojis and “do not disturb until” tweaks, and also seems to have removed app drawer customization from Sony’s build. The OTA update should be hitting those in the trial sometime this week.

Honor 7 Gets Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update in India

Huawei’s Honor series has been flooded with new entrants every now and then but when it comes to updates the phones seemed to be somewhat neglected. Huawei isn’t really known for quick updates, specially for their international (non-Chinsese) builds, but that’s slowly changing. This time around, Huawei has taken care that the Honor 7, its freshest flagship is upgraded to the Android Marshmallow in India.

The Marshmallow update will be available for all the Indian users but it comes with a caveat – users need to register themselves (at this link) for the OTA update by updating their IMEI number and the software version. The company will then deploy the update to the user’s phone within the next 24 tp 48 hours. We really wonder why a user needs to go through all this hoopla just to receive the update, but then again it is worth the efforts considering the fact that it will update your phone with the latest Android available.

A quick recap on Honor 7 specifications, it comes with a 5.2-inch FHD display, 64-bit Kirin 935 paired with a 3GB of RAM. On the imaging front, the phone impresses with a 20-Megapixel primary sensor and a 8-Megapixel secondary sensor. Now that it comes with Marshmallow as well, Honor 7 looks like a great proposition at Rs 22,999.

Android updates have always been a pain point for the users since it needs to cross a handful of checkpoints to reach the users. The process is painstakingly slow especially when it comes to the network locked phone as the carrier is required to certify the update before its rolled out. In the current day scenario, OEMs like Xiaomi are instead rolling out their ROMs on the forums so that the users can manually update their device by flashing with the latest ROMs. By asking users to register for the OTA, Huawei is probably prioritizing users who actually care about OS updates over others who don’t really care to get the latest.

Maximum subscriber growth from Category C circles not translating into revenues

With maximum growth being recorded by the circles of Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, and Assam, category `C’ are recording the maximum subscriber growth. However, this subscriber growth is not translating into revenue growth

Jammu & Kashmir recorded a subscriber growth of 16% with the number of subscribers increasing from 8.25 million at the end of June 2014 to 9.6 million at the end of June 2015, as per data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. J&K circle is closely followed by Bihar where the subscriber base grew from 63.16 million at the end of June 2014 to 72.6 million at the end of June 2015. Bihar recorded a subscriber growth of 15% if one compares the total number of subscribers in June 2014 with subscriber number in June 2015.
On the other hand, Assam, which is also a category `C’ circle recorded a growth of 13% with subscribers increasing from 15.5 million at the end of June 2014 to 17.5 million at the end of June 2015.

However these three circles continue to record one of the lowest revenues for telcos. J&K recorded revenue of Rs 518.7 crore in AMJ 2015 while Bihar recorded revenue of Rs 2558.8 crore in the same time period. On the other hand, Assam recorded revenue of Rs 839 crore in AMJ 2015.

Jammu & Kashmir has a teledensity of 76.9% while Bihar and Assam have teledensity of 51.1% and 53.9% respectively, underlining a need of network expansion and addition of further subscribers from these circles.

Experts have been saying for long that the next wave of subscriber growth is going to come from the rural segment. The top three circles recording maximum revenue growth are predominantly rural. Telcos have largely ignored the country’s hinterland because Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) continues to remain low. The investment in rural expansion usually translates to long gestation period before a telecom operator is able to generate revenue or break even.

However it is a chicken and egg situation. Unless and until they expand more users will not come on board and revenue from existing subscribers is unlikely to increase if products specifically targeted at them are launched.

With 84.75 million (at the end of June 2015) subscribers, UP (E) has the largest subscriber base in India. UP (E) circle is closely followed by Tamil Nadu (79.96 million subscribers-June 2015) and Maharashtra (76.89 million, June 2015).

Amazon Says It Added 3M Prime Members In The Week Before Christmas

Amazon is a company famous for press releases that are devoid of actual information. (As we saw after Thanksgiving this month.) But, in a moment of selective truth-telling, the company just revealed that it signed up over three million members for its Prime program during the week before Christmas.

There are caveats, of course, as ever.

Amazon confirmed to Geekwire that this figure refers to new trial and paying members. So the actual number retained as ongoing, paying members may prove to be lower. (This is the case with over services that offer free trials, such as Apple Music.)

The company just gave a figure for the third week of December — which, in case you forgot, is right before Christmas falls — so we’re unable to gauge how much more popular the service was than a more normal week. Offering free shipping is clearly most appealing during last-minute Christmas shopping time.

(Fwiw, last year, Amazon said it added 10 million new Prime members over the entire “holiday period.)

And finally, in typical Amazon fashion, there is no word on the total number of subscribers that the service has, although it was apparently a “record-breaking holiday season.”

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and there are tens of millions of members worldwide,” the company added.

But the three million figure does give a small glimpse into the service’s popularity.

The $99 per year Prime service gives Amazon customers free-shipping for Amazon.com products, other shopping perks and access to its Prime video service.

Netflix, which rivals Amazon on the latter, has 69 million customers across 60 countries worldwide. Amazon Prime Video is only available in the U.S., UK, Austria, Germany and (recently added) Japan, however, though Prime membership services are supported in more countries.

That’s the most meaningful part of Amazon’s holiday announcement. Other carefully selected metrics — some of which include no actual, raw figures and therefore give little to no insight — include:

• Nearly 70 percent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device this holiday — last year that was approaching 60 percent, but we don’t know how many went beyond browsing and actually bought items via mobile
• Prime members made The Man in the High Castle the most watched TV season on Prime Video this holiday by 4.5x and doubled their total viewing hours of Prime Video titles, compared to 2014
• Biggest holiday ever for Amazon Devices – up 2x over last year’s record-setting holiday


• Over 200 million more items shipped for free with Prime this holiday season
• Prime Now has busiest day ever on Christmas Eve
• • Amazon shipped to 185 countries this holiday
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Twitter’s Fiscal 2015: Up, Flat, And Down

Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall.

The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things around, but so far it still hasn’t found a way to really do a better job of building its audience.

The result? Share price declines that have put Twitter near all-time lows as the year concludes.

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price - 1 Year | FindTheCompany

The numbers speak for themselves. After its IPO, Twitter shot to more than $60 per share. The company then spent time in the $30 range, the $40 range, and the $50 range. This year, Twitter has seen its value fall further, bouncing around the low $20 range.

For employees who have options priced at a far higher levels, the declines are not theoretical. They are material. And there is a rot that can set in when it comes to falling share prices — the public equivalent of a down round, in some ways — as it becomes more difficult to hire, retain key talent, and keep morale up.

So, what’s happened this year? Let’s take a look.

Twitter’s financial performance

Key to Twitter’s success story — and it has been a success story — is its financial performance. The company has posted strong revenue growth, beaten expectations, and impressively monetized its user base. To its former critics that decried it as a fad, or financial impossibility, Twitter can drop the following revenue figures and saunter away:

• First quarter, 2015: $436 million, up 74 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Second quarter, 2015: $502 million, up 61 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Third quarter, 2015: $569 million, up 58 percent, compared to the year-ago period.

If you were curious as to how to monetize social services, Twitter has blazed a trail worth studying. The company’s monetary performance is a credit to its management team.

However, there is a cap on Twitter’s future financial performance. While it has done yeoman’s work extracting more value from its existing user base, the firm is still dependent on user growth. That, in the long-term, is necessary to generate new revenue. The argument is simple: If Twitter can’t grow its cadre of active users, it cannot eventually further grow its revenue.

You can only squeeze a rag so hard, in other words.

And, where Twitter has been precisely brilliant regarding its improving top line, it has seen difficulty convincing the masses that using Twitter is what they should do.

Twitter’s stalling user growth

In the second quarter this year, new CEO Jack Dorsey pretty much summed up a significant challenge for the company in a single statement: “Our Q2 results show good progress in monetization, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience.”

This statement serves as a microcosm for the company. Its financials looked good, but its number logged-in users did not grow as much as the company had hoped. The company’s monthly active user growth had essentially stalled — and for a company whose performance is dependent on its audience, that demonstrated a massive problem for investors.

Twitter MAU Over Time | SoftwareInsider

Still, that doesn’t mean Twitter’s total user base isn’t growing. There’s a whole swath of users that may simply be logged out — which is difficult to track, and something Twitter is working on. The company is also actively experimenting with new products in order to increase engagement among its users. But the best advertising targeting Twitter can do is on users that have built an interest graph, which involves signing up, logging in and following others to get a sense of what the user is looking for.

“One other thing to note, we also are monetizing logged-out users across the network,” COO Adam Bain said on the last earnings call. “This is the first time that we’ve been doing that. It’s going to come in handy as we also begin to run a pilot here in Q4 for on-Twitter logged-out monetization. So we’re going to take some of that learnings and apply it back on Twitter logged-out [advertising] products.”

But while Twitter’s financial performance continues to beat expectations, slowing logged-in audience growth serves as a limitation for the upside for the company. There are a couple of ways to increase its bottom line — it can improve its advertising products and come out with new ones, or acquire its way into new venues of advertising, for example. But in the end, if it’s going to really explode to new heights and impress investors, it needs to re-ignite its user growth as well.

In sum, while Twitter’s revenue has grown, and its user growth has stalled, its shares have fallen.

It’s up for you to decide if the investing classes are being too hard on Twitter. The firm still has a strong cash position, and is worth billions and billions of dollars. The proper question, perhaps, is how Twitter will manage to bolster its larger consumer appeal, without losing the interest of its key content creators.

In the end, Twitter is still a bit of a confusing company. It continues to improve and develop new advertising products, and bought its way into a brand-new kind of video format in the case of Periscope. That’s something that should impress investors, but Twitter’s finding that challenging — particularly because these kinds of bets are, in theory, long-term ones.

And for Twitter to be a long-term safe bet, it has to be firing on all cylinders, which includes finding ways to do a better job of building, measuring, and monetizing its audience.

A representative for Twitter directed us to the company’s 2015 Q3 earnings call when we requested comment.

Top 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks

Digital Books or eBooks as they are popularly known have become a rage ever since the influx of eBook hand readers like Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony PRS eBook reader etc. Reading eBooks was never more fun. Here are some useful websites indexing hundreds and thousands of Free eBooks. Some are simple search engines, while others host free eBooks.

Top 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks

1. Google Books – It is a web search engine by Google specially for Books. Google digitizes books from different sources and then make them available on its servers. Copyright oblige, some are only partially published. Google Books allows public-domain works and other out-of-copyright material to be downloaded in PDF format.

2. Mega PDF – Mega PDF indexes more than 379 million free downloadable eBooks in PDF format. From novels to biographies to technology books, you can find everything here.

3. Pdfgeni – It lets you find and download books, novels, manuals, articles, document templates, reports, data sheets, and pretty much any information that is stored in PDF format.

4. Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device. PG has the largest collection of public domain books. Lots of books from the world’s greatest fiction authors such as Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Dickens are present here.

5. NeoTake – Neotake is a new eBook search engine which has indexed several eBooks in various formats like ePUB, PDF, LRF, TXT, Mobipocket etc. It also has a mobile version of the site. More than 200,000 eBooks have been indexed currently.

6. Free-EBooks – Free-eBooks is an online source for free ebook downloads, ebook resources and ebook authors. Besides free ebooks, you also download free magazines or submit your own ebook. A bit of a downside is that you need to register before downloading your favorite eBooks.

7. ManyBooks – ManyBooks provides free ebooks for your PDA, iPod or eBook Reader. You can randomly browse for a ebook through the most popular titles, recommendations or recent reviews for visitors. There are more than 26,658 eBooks available here and they’re all free!

8. Search PDF eBooks – It’s another cool PDF eBooks search engine with millions of books in its database. Ignore the excessive ads and just enjoy the free ebooks!

9. ReadPrint – Free online books library for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast. Thousands of stories, poems and novels listed down here.

10. KnowFree – It is a web portal where users are able to exchange freely e-books, video training and other materials for educational purposes and self-practice. It contains loads of free technology, engineering, web development and Business skills ebooks and in addition, there are lots of video tutorials available.

So which one is your favorite? If you have any recommendation worth mentioning here, mention that in the comments section.