Federal Board of Revenue has imposed a tax of Rs. 1,000 on every smartphone import and Rs. 500 on every feature phone that will be imported into the country.

An SRO issued by FBR said that “Government is pleased to direct” to charge sales tax on cell phones as following:

• Rs. 1,000 per cellular mobile phone in case of a smart phone or Satellite phone, where the term smart phone means a cellular mobile phone having following characteristics:
  • 4GB or higher basic memory
  • Touch screen
  • Dual core or higher processor
  • 5 Megapixel or higher camera
  • iOS, Android version 2.3, Android Gingerbird or higher, Blackberry, Windows 8 phones or higher
• Rs. 500 per cell phone in case other than smart phone or satellite phone

Here is the copy of original SRO issued by FBR:

Under these directions, every phone – which is a touch screen or has a 5MP camera or above – will be charged at a tax rate of Rs. 1,000.

Estimates suggest that FBR is likely to make Rs. 5 billion per annum with this new tax. It merits mentioning here that FBR is short of annual tax collection target of Rs 2.381 trillion and this is probably why it is unfolding every possible avenue to get its target.

Market sources say that even the cheapest cell phones – those imported from China – will come under the tax net and prices for a Rs. 2,000 phone will go up to Rs. 3,000 to 3,500 on average.

The step is likely to increase the cell phone prices in Pakistan by Rs. 1,500 to Rs. 2,000 and those who had stocks available with them are going to make several billions of rupees after this decision. The whole burden is to be endured by the end users of telecom sector who are already paying highest tax rates amongst all sectors.

Increase in tax is also going to promote illegal channels of bringing cell phones into the country, hurting the revenues of main stream mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Samsung.

Commerce bodies and importers have already protested the decision and have demanded the government to withdraw the SRO.

It maybe recalled that government of Pakistan had imposed Rs. 500 sales tax on every imported phone, which was latter cut to Rs. 250 per phone amid industry demands.

Islamabad High Court (IHC) has ordered the cellular companies to discontinue any and all prize schemes.

It maybe recalled that PTA had directed the telecom service providers to put a complete halt on prize awarding schemes as it violates Telecom Consumer Protection Control otherwise the authority would take legal action.

Taking PTA up on its threat, all telecom operators had challenged the PTA directives in Islamabad High Court. PTA in defence of its case presented the order of Supreme Court discouraging such activities whereas the prosecutor (cellular companies) pointed out that introduction of prize schemes did not violate consumer rights and that Supreme Court had instructed against prize schemes which were illegal and ill structured.

Telecom operators were of the stance that the prize scheme could not be discontinued with immediate effect as there were a number of stakeholders involved who were working together after having lawfully agreed on the terms and conditions as per law of the land.

The IHC, after initial hearing, had issued a stay order in favor of cellular companies but on Friday it dismissed their petitions.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf has launched its mobile app for iOS while the Android version is said to be in the making as of now.

The App was launched by the PTI Mobile App Team (Jibran Ilyas, Haris Siddique, Aly Boghani) in collaboration with their Web Management and the Social Media Team. The about section of the App states that the project was initiated by Youth of PTI (USA) and is built with the supports of volunteers.

PTI iOS App is retina optimized and supports the latest iPhone 5 screen size while its total size is around 18.8 MB.

Lets have a look what this App has to offer:

Voter Verification (Powered by Nadra)

Tap on a button on the home screen and compose SMS message window pops up where voters can send their CNIC number and get their voter verification details.

Insaf Radio

A button on the Landing screen takes you to “TuneIn” web page within the App where the audio stream can be listened. (TuneIn is a famous broadcasting hosting service). At the moment the Radio features requires you to download an additional App “TuneIn”, the lack of in-App radio stream support seems disappointing. However this can be enhanced in upcoming versions.

Insaf TV

Although essentially a webpage, yet the video viewing experience is leaps ahead of the Audio Stream (Radio) capabilities. The webpage opens within the App, which has a responsive design (optimized for mobile) and the overall interface seems like a YouTube clone — having features like Search, Like/Dislike, Share etc. (Content is populated from http://insafpk.tv/)

Contribution

Also available on the landing screen, a shortcut for the user to donate from their Credit Card to PTI. This is a powerful feature however executed poorly. The action forces the user outside the app, opening up a window in mobile safari browser.

The webpage presented is not even mobile optimized that leads to a lot of pinching in and out to accomplish what should have a been made an experience that is delightful and simple as possible.

A dedicated tab in the bottom navigation bar also takes you to donation page

News & Twitter

The second tab at the bottom navigation us for News, which are aggregated from the Insaf website and the official Facebook page of PTI. Similarly twitter feeds are shown in the twitter section.

I found the segmented controllers used at the top a painful experience to organize content from various sources. They are tiny, hard to read and tap on. Wastage of negative space should have been put to better use. Although efforts to maintain consistency throughout the App should be applauded. Worth mentioning here is the Twitter API integration which makes sharing a tweet is super easy.

Actions

A must have feature for every political party. Actions include: Become A Paying Member, Sign-Up To Volunteer and Share this App. I did a quick test of the ‘Share this App’ as a Facebook post. Disappointingly instead of sharing the App, the App forced me to share the insaf.pk url instead. No Facebook post preview was shown, Facebook iOS 6 API should have been put to use here.

‘Become a Paying Member’ and ‘Sign-up to Volunteer’ are in-app forms in which the user can fill their information. (This is what contribute section should have been like: an In-App form). Although I don’t approve the overall designs of these forms, tiny font and wastage of precious mobile screen. But they serve the purpose and get the job done.

Info

This section of the App displays information related to the political party. There are 6 large buttons on this info page (Ideology, Policies, Constitution, Leadership Assets, About the App ). Most of these are linked to documents instead of native pages. Seems like the development team were rushed and they included document files instead of copying and formatting the content on native app pages.

There is a wealth of information in these document ranging from constitution to policies on economy, health, energy etc. that will help PTI spread its message influencing potential voters and supports.

Following Punjab government, the provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has selected Dell to provide 25,000 Inspiron 3420 laptops, which will be distributed to students in the province.

Initially, the laptops would be distributed among the students of four-year Bachelor of Studies (BS) programme and students of professional colleges including medical and engineering.

Furthermore, laptops would also be given to the top 10 position holders of government schools in the intermediate examinations conducted by all boards of intermediate and secondary education in the province.

Two percent quota is reserved for disabled students of BS programme and engineering and medical institutions, while students of master degrees enrolled in the public sector colleges and universities were not included in the scheme so far.

The initiative is the largest of its kind ever in the province and is designed to help enable students and people of KPK to become productive and contributing members of society and to give back to the province. The first round of distribution will be conducted on Feb 10 at Peshawar University.

Speaking about the initiative, Project Director KPK, Adeel Khan, said

“This project is a great leap in terms of equipping our youth to meet the challenges of the modern world and to keep Pakistan a competitor in the global knowledge economy. Dell’s involvement goes a long way in guaranteeing the success of this initiative.”

Shahzad Aslam Khan, Country Manager Dell Pakistan & Afghanistan, said

“We look forward to working with KPK as they increase technology access and the learning potential for students. Mobile computing devices have become essential to daily life — at work, at home and increasingly, in academic institutions.

Students are leveraging devices of all kinds to access information, collaborate with their peers and teachers, and produce dynamic content inside and outside of the classroom.

At Dell, we believe these devices can help support teaching and learning – and have the potential to personalize the learning experience for each student.Dell is delighted to work with KPK in this important program and is committed to providing these devices by meeting aggressive time lines and ensuring highest product quality.”

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has announced the formal launch of its Internet TV channel called Insaf TV. PTI says that the move is aimed at bringing more audience at a time when party is facing issues in gaining media’s attention during their prime time shows.

Internet TV channels are quite rare in Pakistan but there are few examples — such as Saach TV — that clearly show the potential in the segment for both the publishers and viewers.

To capitalize the growing Internet population of Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Insaaf aims to bring cost-effective and timely broadcast of party announcements, events, updates and more to the party workers.

Currently the content on the channel focuses on video messages of PTI’s second tier leadership, also recordings of the party’s public meetings, rallies and documentaries created as a part of their election campaign.

Insaf TV will also enable those less-known PTI workers to get featured on screens, which was otherwise not possible. Moreover, those Pakistanis living abroad can also remain posted with PTI updated and activities.

Former television personality Misbah Khalid has been brought in as part of the editorial board and will be responsible for content creation on Insaf TV.

Currently Insaf TV is hosting videos on its own servers, which we anticipate to get shifted to more powerful third party resources with time. Other than YouTube (a service that is blocked in Pakistan) Vimeo and Ustream offer dedicated channels for such purposes that can manage hundred of thousands of concurrent viewers.

Go and Check Insaaf TV here: http://insafpk.tv/