Vivo X200 FE and X Fold 5 launching in India on July 14
Starting with the Vivo X Fold 5, this phone is expected to feature the same 6,000mAh battery as the Chinese model, supported by 80W wired and 40W wireless charging. Vivo claims this setup can deliver up to 80.6 hours of music playback on a single charge. Despite the large battery, the phone is quite slim — measuring 9.2mm when folded and just 4.3mm when opened — and it weighs 217g.advertisementJust like in China, the foldable is expected to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset in India and could offer a bunch of smart AI features, such as AI Image Expander, AI Magic Move, AI Erase, and AI Reflection Erase. Vivo is also pushing multitasking with its Workbench feature, which is said to let users run up to five tasks at the same time. There's also a Shortcut Button for quick access to key functions and a Kinematic hinge that Vivo claims can handle up to 600,000 folds.On the camera front, the Vivo X Fold 5 will feature a triple rear camera setup — all expected to be 50-megapixel sensors — covering the main camera, ultra-wide, and telephoto, with 3x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. The camera system is co-engineered with Zeiss, just like previous Vivo flagships. The foldable's display is another major talking point, with Vivo claiming a peak brightness of 4,500 nits — which would make it one of the brightest screens on any phone, foldable or otherwise.What could make the Vivo X Fold 5 more interesting in India is its expected pricing. Since it carries the same processor as last year, Vivo might go for a more aggressive price this time. In China, the phone starts at CNY 6,999, which roughly converts to Rs 83,400 for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage variant. It remains to be seen what Vivo sets as the Indian price, but chances are it could be more competitive than previous foldables from the brand.advertisementAs for the Vivo X200 FE, this one is likely to come with a 6.31-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. The design will be sleek too, with the phone expected to measure just 7.99mm in thickness. Under the hood, Vivo might use the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ or even the newer Dimensity 9400e chip, paired with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.There's a 6,500mAh battery here as well, paired with 90W fast charging — which should easily last a full day and then some. For cameras, the phone is said to get a Zeiss-branded triple rear setup — a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel telephoto lens, and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide unit. On top of that, the device could also come with IP68 and IP69 ratings, which would make it more durable than most phones in this price range.Speaking of price, the Vivo X200 FE is expected to cost around Rs 55,000 in India. That said, we'll have to wait just a few more days to know the exact specs and pricing details, once Vivo officially announces everything on July 14.- Ends
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Digital is taking over the retail sector at a breakneck pace; buyers are moving away from offline to digital, malls in metros are already witnessing a stagnation in rentals or vacancies. The online digital market is expected to touch $325 billion by 2030 according to Deloitte, growing 2.5 times the offline retail market. Real estate consultancy firm ANAROCK is even more bullish, it says that digital retail will touch $550 billion by 2035 in a report titled 'Future of Retail". It estimates the overall online market will jump to $325 billion in 2030 from $70 billion in 2022. However, it will be larger than the organised retail market, which is projected to reach just $230 billion in 2030, doubling from a base of $110 billion in 2022. Organised retail is defined by companies such as Trent and Reliance Trends, which rent malls and sell through them. Lobbyists try to downplay this growth of digital by comparing it not to the organised retail, but to the total retail market, where the unorganised sector is much larger. These lobbyists keep saying that digital is so small that it does not matter. Why are we trying to curb its growth? Online retail is driven by technology, creating jobs that fuel further innovation. Lobbyists representing Big Tech and industry bodies such as the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and the US-India Business Council (USIBC) have continuously raised objections to the bill and are especially concerned about its ex-ante regulatory approach. Their core argument is that India should avoid adopting an EU-style framework like the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and instead focus on strengthening its existing competition law through better enforcement. However, this opposition ignores India's interest as well as the fact that all these companies are following this very rule in the EU. It is as if they still want to treat India as a third world country where they can bully and beat their way into ignoring everything that is fair. Ex-ante regulation refers to a pre-emptive system of oversight. Rather than waiting for anti-competitive behaviour to occur and then reacting—as is the case with ex-post regulation—ex-ante rules seek to prevent abuses before they can harm consumers or distort markets. The draft Digital Competition Bill (DCB) proposes to classify certain large digital firms as 'Systemically Significant Digital Enterprises" (SSDEs), subjecting them to a set of obligations aimed at preventing monopolistic conduct. These include bans on self-preferencing, the misuse of non-public business data, and mandatory interoperability, along with requirements for transparency and user choice in defaults. Lobbyists write in the Economic Times of July 7, 2025 against the DCB, suggesting that India should avoid emulating Europe's 'stringent rules' and instead focus on building up the enforcement capacity of its existing framework under the Competition Act. They caution that hardwired bans could penalise scale, discourage innovation, and stifle growth. This is the traditional argument given by all Tech monopolists that scale will be affected, the question is whose scale it is the scale of these monopoly platforms that is affected. Who loses the whole economy of the country loses if these rules are not enacted. Jobs are lost, as consolidation of sellers leads to Chinese imports, which harms manufacturing. The loss of jobs in organised and unorganised retail has been well documented. In the long run this leads to the hollowing out of the Indian economy, like it has happened in the US. EU regulators are therefore insisting on controls. Lobbyists even get vague surveys done to show that DCB will harm MSMEs and legacy media publishes without checking the accuracy of the sample size and its impact. If ex-ante regulations are not applied these tech platforms have perfected the system of delaying any impact of regulations. They have been running circles around CCI by filing so many petitions in the court against every decision that no action can be taken against them. The action by CCI almost becomes irrelevant by the time it is implemented through the courts, which in India can take years. Moreover, the fine that is levied is so small and the profits that these platforms generate is so humongous that they are willing to pay the fine and continue doing what they were fined for. Another paper funded by Google and Amazon and written by the think tank Carnegie Endowment has a similar if more detailed take. 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Below is a snapshot of the main concerns raised by the lobbyists and their implications for competition and consumers in India: What's often left unsaid in the lobbyist submissions is that global giants are already adapting to the DMA in Europe. The opposition to India adopting a similar path has less to do with the principle of regulation and more with maintaining the asymmetry of power in markets like India, where regulatory institutions are weaker and startup ecosystems are still maturing. For Indian digital businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, the current imbalance often manifests in opaque search rankings, exploitative commissions, and arbitrary changes to algorithmic visibility—all of which could be addressed through ex-ante mechanisms. Moreover, the claim that ex-ante rules will deter investment is not supported by global evidence. The DMA has not led to any large-scale disinvestment in Europe; instead, it has encouraged many emerging firms to explore European markets because they now face a more level playing field. For India, a calibrated ex-ante approach could do the same: enhance competition, promote innovation from the bottom up, and ensure that market dominance does not translate into market abuse. The Digital Competition Bill attempts to do exactly that. By identifying SSDEs based on both quantitative and qualitative thresholds, it aims to target those enterprises whose control over user data, platform infrastructure, and market access creates systemic dependencies. What the lobbyists are asking India to do is to delay such a move in favour of a slower, case-by-case model that has already proven inadequate in addressing fast-moving harms. Their appeals to protect innovation and investment are, in effect, appeals to maintain dominance and avoid disruption. India would do well to reject these pleas and proceed with a well-designed ex-ante framework—not as a copy of the EU model, but as a sovereign assertion of its right to define fair competition in its own digital economy. top videos View all India has the opportunity to shape the next decade of global digital regulation—not as a passive recipient of Western frameworks but as a proactive leader crafting rules that protect its innovators, empower its consumers, and secure its economic sovereignty. The Digital Competition Bill, with its ex-ante core, is a step in precisely that direction. K Yatish Rajawat is a public policy researcher and works at the Gurugram-based think tank Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: July 08, 2025, 15:34 IST News opinion Opinion | Foreign Lobbyists Want India To Give Up Digital Competition Bill
