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Italian steelworkers strike over planned job losses after ArcelorMittal takeover

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Rome, Oct 9 (IANS/AKI) Workers at the troubled Ilva steel plant in southern Italy on Monday held a 24-hour-strike over plans to cut 4,000 jobs as part of its restructuring under a takeover by led by Indian steel multinational ArcelorMittal.

Union members held a sit-in at Ilva’s site in Taranto, Puglia, where 3,300 job losses are planned and also protested at Ilva’s plant in Genoa where a further 600 jobs would go.

The Am Investco takeover consortium intends to re-hire almost 10,000 out of 14,000 Ilva workers, according to a letter sent to unions ahead of government-mediated talks slated in Rome on Monday.

Italian trade unions and the government want Am Investco to guarantee it will maintain Ilva employees’ existing salaries, jobs and contractual benefits while the consortium has said it wants to re-negotiate these.

Am Investco includes ArceolorMittal and Italy’s Marcegaglia and Intesa Sanpaolo bank. The Italian government in June accepted Am Investco’s offer of 1.8 billion euros to revamp and clean up the steelworks after the consortium fought off a rival bid from a partnership led by the Indian company Jindal South West Steel.

ArcelorMittal pledged to invest 2.4 billion euros in Ilva, in addition to the purchase price, the Italian government said at the time.

A court this year declared Ilva insolvent, with nearly three billion euros of debt. The polluting Taranto plant, the largest in Europe, was nationalised and put under special administration in 2015 after the Riva family, which owned it, was accused of failing to prevent toxic emissions.

The plant, which once produced a third of Italy’s steel, has been linked to higher cancer rates in the local population. It is at the centre of a major legal case in which prosecutors alleged that 11,550 people had been killed by emissions in seven years.

–IANS/AKI
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Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones

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CasinoDays India

International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.

Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.

The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.

Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile

The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.

CasinoDays India

The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.

“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.

Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings

Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.

 

CasinoDays India

Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).

Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.

The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.

Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.

Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities

The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.

On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.

Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.

“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.

The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.

 

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