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Facebook launches Lite to get 2G users on board

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New Delhi: Social networking site Facebook is betting on the new light version of its app on the popular Android platform to tap the 2G using population of the country.

“According to GSMA data, nearly 80 percent of Indians are on 2G and hence we want to ease the Facebook interactive experience for them,” said Vijay Shankar, product manager, Facebook Lite.

“There was a demand for this product and we decided to do our research and development before developing a separate app that will cater to the demand and also update itself as time goes by,” Shankar said.

According to the social networking site, Facebook Lite was built for these situations, giving people a reliable Facebook experience when bandwidth is at a minimum. In many areas, networks can be slow and not able to support all the functionality found in Facebook for Android, it said.

The Lite app, which is less than 1MB, can be downloaded from the Play Store. The app uses a compression technology wherein most of the heavy lifting is done on Facebook’s servers.

Explaining the technology, Shankar said: “Lite can run on phones with lower hardware specs as the cache is smaller in size and also the app does not consume much memory on the device.”

The new app includes Facebook’s core experiences like News Feed, status updates, photos, notifications but has no options for video, GPS-using facilities and @tagging features.

“We did not add video as we want to take no risk with it. Usually GPS takes up a lot of data so we choose to keep that away too,” Shankar explained.

“Lite is in line with Facebook’s strategy to connect the next billion people in the country,” Shankar said.

The site has around 125 million users in the country making India Facebook’s second biggest market. The app was tested in other developing markets before it was launched in India, Shankar added.

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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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