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Modi announces visa on arrival for 14 Pacific Island countries
Suva: India Wednesday proposed a slew of measures to foster closer cooperation with the 14 Pacific island-nations, including visa on arrival for all and an e-network to connect the islands to provide tele-medicine and tele-education.
Addressing the first Pacific Island Leaders Meeting here, Modi said, “India wishes to be a close partner of the Pacific Islands”.
He announced setting up of a Special Adaptation Fund of $1 million to provide technical assistance and training for capacity building to the Pacific Island nations.
He announced Visa on Arrival for nationals of all Pacific island-countries – Cook Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Niue, Palau, Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
He proposed an e-network to connect the island nations, given the distances between the islands and poor connectivity. Modi Modi
He said “in keeping with the success achieved in the pan-Africa Project, we propose to develop Pan Pacific Islands Project for tele-medicine and tele-education”.
“We are also working on a solar energy project with the Pacific islands at the community level. The regional hubs will be developed in the Pacific islands,” he said.
Modi announced a hike in the grant-in-aid to Pacific island-countries from $125,000 to $200,000 each annually for community projects selected by them.
He also announced establishment of trade office of the Pacific island-nations in New Delhi to foster trade and to provide complimentary space to the countries during exhibitions organised by the India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) to showcase their products.
“We need to find complementarities in our trade. India could be important source of low-cost medicines. We can do joint research in traditional medicine. Explore options of developing healthcare facilities for the benefit of people in the region,” he said.
Modi also proposed to provide training to diplomats from Pacific island-countries to be held in India, and to begin a Distinguished Visitors Programme under which seminars would be held to explore new ideas for strengthening economic cooperation.
Modi proposed cooperation in space technology applications.
“We can look at possibilities of sharing data that could be used for monitoring climate change, disaster risk reduction and management, resource management,” he said.
He also proposed that a Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC) be held on a regular basis and that the next meeting could be held in 2015 in a coastal location in 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.
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.
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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