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Mallya wants beer out of alcoholic beverage list
Bengaluru: Beer should be treated as a non-alcoholic beverage to boost its consumption across the country, United Breweries Ltd chairman Vijay Mallya said on Tuesday.
“As beer has only five percent alcohol unlike 40 percent in hard liquor or spirits, it is irrational to charge the same prohibitive tax on both the beverages,” Mallya told shareholders at the company’s 16th AGM here.
Noting that the per capita consumption of beer in India was two litres as against 27 litres globally, Mallya said as a result, beer contributed five percent to the total alcohol consumed across the country, with 280 million cases sold in 2015 as against 100 million cases in 2005.
As a leader in the low-alcoholic beverage, UBL has 52 percent market share in the country, with its nearest rival having less than half of its share.
Seeking a rational regulatory and taxation policy on beer, the liquor baron said unlike in India, beer was the preferred beverage of choice in most of the world, especially for young consumers and ranked third among all beverages after water and tea.
“Decades of perverse taxation policy that equates spirits and beer had resulted in beer being prohibitively expensive as a share of the consumer’s wallet. There is an urgent need for a rational regulatory and taxation policy for long-term benefits to all the stakeholders,” said Mallya.
Noting that the irrational taxation policy was driving youngsters to prefer hard liquor with attendant moral and social consequences in preference to beer, he said the industry could reach an inflexion point and grow rapidly if tax on beer was in proportion to the alcoholic strength, which is five percent.
Welcoming the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) across the country, Mallya, however, said excluding the liquor industry from it would lead to imposition of punitive costs on its players.
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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