Flipkart founders on Tuesday sent an email to its customers apologising for the problems they experienced during the Big Billion Day Sale the day before.

"Yesterday was a big day for us. And we really wanted it to be a great day for you. But at the end of the day, we know that your experience was less than pleasant. We did not live up to the promises we made and for that we are really and truly sorry," says the email from Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal that was sent to all customers.

Unlike the media statement the company released on Monday that boasted of $100 million (Rs. 615 crores approximately) sales in 10 hours but was strangely silent on theproblems customers experienced during the day, the Flipkart email addresses almost all issues that people complained about on Monday.

This included the price change issue, wherein many alleged that Flipkart had increased prices of products leading up to the sale, which misled customers to believe the discount on offer was higher than usual.

"As we were preparing various deals and promotional pricing in the lead up to the sale, the pricing of several products got ​changed to their non-discounted rates for a few hours​," the email from Flipkart says. " We realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again."

On the inability of people to access the website at times, Flipkart said it had deployed nearly 5000 servers, and had prepared for 20 times the normal traffic growth, but "the volume of traffic at different times of the day was much higher than this."

The email also addresses other problems Flipkart customers faced like cancellations and out of stock issues.

Here's Flipkart email in full:

Dear Customer,

Yesterday was a big day for us. And we really wanted it to be a great day for you. But at the end of the day, we know that your experience was less than pleasant. We did not live up to the promises we made and for that we are really and truly sorry.

It took enormous effort from everyone at Flipkart, many months of preparation and pushing our capabilities and systems to the limit to be able to create this day. We were looking at fulfilling the dreams of millions of Indian consumers through deals and offers we had painstakingly put together for months.

And though we saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before, we also realized that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements. To add to this, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site.

An unprecedented 1.5 million people shopped at Flipkart yesterday. While we stand humbled by the sheer faith that such a large number of customers have shown in us, we are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions more who wanted to buy from us yesterday.

And this is not acceptable to us.

Delighting you, and every single one of our customers, is absolutely the top most priority for Flipkart and we have worked very hard over the last seven years to earn your trust. Yesterday, we failed that trust. We have learnt some valuable lessons from this and have started working doubly hard to address all the issues that cropped up during this sale.

Price Changes As we were preparing various deals and promotional pricing in the lead up to the sale, the pricing of several products got ​changed to their non-discounted rates for a few hours​. We realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again.

Out-of-stock Issues We ran out of the stock for many products within a few minutes (and in some cases, seconds) of the sale going live. For example, most of our special deals were sold out as soon as they went live. We had ensured availability, anywhere from hundreds to a few lakh units for various products, but it was nowhere near the actual demand. We promise to plan much better for future promotions and ensure that we minimise the out-of-stock issues.

Cancellations We had large number of people buying specific products simultaneously. This led to some instances of an order getting over-booked for a product that was sold out just a few seconds ago. We are working round-the-clock to ensure availability of additional units for these products and will do our level best to ensure that we minimise any cancellations.

Website Issues ​We realise that the shopping experience for many of you was frustrating due to errors and unavailability of the website at times. We had deployed nearly 5000 servers and had prepared for 20 times the traffic growth - but the volume of traffic at different times of the day was much higher than this. We are continuing to significantly scale up all our back end systems so that we do a much, much better job next time.

Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith. This is why we come to work each day and continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers. We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologise once again to every single customer for our failure.

We all use USB storage devices and accessories - in fact there are billions of them in the world right now, according to the USB Implementers Forum - and we take for granted that they'll just work when plugged in. Before the standard existed, plugging anything in to a PC usually involved shutting it down, restarting, and installing drivers.

This simplicity is achieved using microcontrollers in each USB device which negotiate connections with host PCs and tell both parties how to recognise each other. Now, nearly 20 years after the first USB devices became widespread, a lack of forethought about security in the original implementations of those controllers is being exploited.

Security researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson announced that they had reverse-engineered one widely used USB controller chip and demonstrated how they had been successful in reprogramming commonly available USB pen drives to behave in unexpected ways. Their methods can be expected to be replicated for malicious purposes since the two have released all their findings, including source code, to the public.

A previous report on the potential vulnerability, which has come to be known as BadUSB, was published earlier this year although no information was released that could have been used by attackers. Caudill and Wilson believe that the scale of the problem is so immense that the entire industry needs to be jolted into action, or nothing will be done about it. It is also possible that the flaw has been known to attackers (including government agencies) for a long time and has been exploited without anyone knowing. Forcing knowledge of BadUSB into the public domain will make potential victims aware of that possibility.

Terrifyingly, fixing the problem will require a completely new set of USB protocols and the scrapping of all devices that are currently in existence. People are so used to USB that they will not hesitate to plug in a storage device, keyboard, or any other product - even a smartphone. This complacence can be exploited by attackers, for example, by leaving a doctored pen drive lying around in public or giving thousands of them away for free in a promotion - no one would hesitate to plug it in.

Because the drive's firmware has been modified, formatting it won't do any good. Malware detection tools can only scan storage locations, not firmware. Experts citied by Wired estimate that it could take over a decade for a new, secure version of USB to become dominant, and even then there would be no way to ensure that every single previously sold USB device had been destroyed.

Even commonly available password-protected pen drives can be compromised - the duo demonstrated a technique by which any password set by a user could be invalidated. The user might continue thinking his device is secure, but unbeknownst to him, any combination of characters will be able to unlock it.

Another demonstration involved modifying a commodity pen drive so that it contains a completely hidden partition which is only mounted by plugging a pen drive into a PC and then ejecting it. When unmounted, the secret partition's contents are not detectable even to forensic examination tools. The final demo was of a virtual keyboard which was capable of taking over input and entering commands on a PC - just plugging in any USB device could trigger a flood of keyboard inputs that could potentially be used to install malware, steal passwords, or anything else.

In effect, USB itself should now be considered fundamentally insecure. Users concerned about device and data security should not use any new USB device that comes into their possession. Affected devices cannot be detected and there is no patch. At most, according to the two demos, PCs might be able to detect fishy behaviour but would not be able to prevent it before it happened. The USB-IF has not responded, although at least one secure device vendor, Ironkey, has publicly announced that its products are not vulnerable because they use signed firmware code, and signatures are verified on each use to make sure the code has not been tampered with.

USB as a standard is already set to become a lot more confusing with the impending debut of the new, backwards-incompatible Type-C connector which will work with existing USB 3.0 and older devices as well as upcoming USB 3.1 standard.

On the heels of a major launch of large-screen iPhones, Apple has scheduled an October 16 event to update its iPad line, technology news website Re/code reported Friday.

The event also will include a look at next-generation software for powering Macintosh computers, Re/code said, citing unnamed sources.

The gathering is to take place in an auditorium at Apple's headquarters in the California city of Cupertino, according to the report.

Apple did not reply to an AFP request for comment.

If the report is on target, the iPad event will take place a day before Apple begins selling its latest iPhones in China.

Apple launched the large-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on September 19 and has rolled the smartphones out to an array of countries, but not China where it took some time to clear licensing hurdles.

Apple's revenue in Greater China - which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan -- is second only to the United States, and chief executive Tim Cook has said he expects it to become the company's biggest market in time.

Apple, which popularized tablets with its iPad, remained the largest single global vendor in the second quarter but its market share fell to 26.9 percent from 33 percent last year, as Android makers boosted their share, according to the research firm IDC.

iPhone 6 sales soar

The first day of global sales for the phones was a huge success, with Apple breaking its sales record for an opening weekend of a new iPhone model, delivering 10 million in three days and boasting it could have sold more if it had them.

Both new iPhones have larger screens as Apple catches up with the "phablet" trend pioneered by competitors such as Samsung, which has had success with its Galaxy Note series.

The iPhone 6 has a screen of 4.7 inches and the iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5 inches, reflecting a growing preference for big screens on smartphones.

Main rival Samsung has long had a range of larger handsets, which are popular in Asia.

Apple made a rare apology last week for a software bug in a freshly released version of iOS mobile operating system that saw iPhone users lose service, and sought to quell a storm over reports that its new handsets are susceptible to bending.

Apple downplayed reports on bending of its newly released oversize iPhone -- one analyst described the damaging claims as "a black eye" for Apple --- saying it had only received nine complaints about the matter.

The statement said that "with normal use a bend in iPhone is extremely rare and through our first six days of sale, a total of nine customers have contacted Apple with a bent iPhone 6 Plus."

Apple released fully updated iOS 8.0.2 software to fix trouble with the original version of the mobile operating system for its gadgets.

Xiaomi India and Flipkart on Saturday announced 'a special festive surprise' for consumers who failed to buy the Xiaomi Mi 3 smartphones despite repeated attempts. The company is offering a chance to purchase Mi 3 to 25,000 consumers who unsuccessfully tried to purchase the device at least five times or more in previous flash sales.

According to Xiaomi, these 25,000 consumers will find the device added to their cart on Flipkart.com on October 6, without having to register or hit the 'buy' button, as was the practice followed during flash sales. 

Consumers will be intimated directly on October 5, if they have been selected, and upon selection they will have about one to two hours on October 6 to purchase the Xiaomi Mi 3. If some of the consumers do not buy the Mi 3 in the given time, then the device will be offered to a second batch of selected customers on the same day.

The company added via Twitter that this will be the 'last chance' to buy the Xiaomi Mi 3 in India.

Xiaomi Vice President, Hugo Barra had talked about this new system of sales called the Xiaomi Priority Pass at an event in Bangalore last month.

Since the first flash sale of the Mi 3, Xiaomi had faced a lot of criticism from potential customers, with people frustrated about the fact that they had to faced difficulties such as orders being cancelled immediately after being booked, or simply finding that the phone went out of stock in the time it took for the buy button to show up on their screens.

Along with the offer on Saturday, Xiaomi India has also announced that it has sold out more than 3,00,000 Mi phones - Xiaomi Mi 3 and Xiaomi Redmi 1S - since its launch in India two months back. The company did not give a breakup of the sales at this time, but it's known that the company sold around 1,00,000 Mi 3 units, so the split is roughly 1:2 between the Mi 3 and the Redmi 1S .

Manu Jain, GM and Head of India Operations at Xiaomi said, "We would like to pay tribute to our most passionate fans through this little gift of recognising their passion for our products. Even though they have repeatedly tried to get the device and failed, their determination to get Mi 3 clearly sets them apart as fans that any brand would be lucky to have. We do recognise this and have taken this initiative to provide them direct access to purchase the Mi 3. We wish all our fans a happy Dussehra, Eid, and Diwali, and thank them for their love and support."