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Jaitley allocates over Rs.2,000 crore for higher education and skill development
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday announced the setting up of a higher education financing agency with an initial budget of Rs.1,000 crore.
Presenting the union budget for 2016-17 in the Lok Sabha, he also allocated Rs.1,700 crore for setting up skill development institutes across the country.
“We have decided to set up a higher education financing agency with an initial capital base of Rs.1,000 crore. The agency will be a non-profit organisation that will leverage funds from the market and supplement them with donations and CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds,” Jaitley said.
The minister said 62 new Navodaya Vidyalayas will be opened over the next two years in the districts where they don’t currently exist.
One crore youths would be trained under the government’s skill development programme in the next three years, he said.
“We have decided to set up 1,500 multi-skill training institutes across the country. I am settling aside an amount of Rs.1,700 crore for these initiatives,” he said.
He also said that a National Board for Skill Development Certification in partnership with the industry and academia will be set up.
“We propose to further scale up Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna to skill one crore youth over the next three years,” he added.
To encourage entreprenuership, Jaitley said: “2200 colleges, 300 schools, 500 government Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and 50 vocational training centres through massive open online courses (MOOCs) will be set up for entreprenuership, education and training”.
To give a leg-up to the youth entering the job market, the finance minister announced that the government will pay the employee pension scheme contribution of 8.33 percent for the first three years of their employment.
“We propose to make 100 model career centres operational by the end of 2016-2017. And to inter-link state employment exchanges with the National Career Service platform,” he said.
Jaitley also said that more jobs could be created in the retail sector, if the regulations were simplified.
“If shopping malls are kept open all seven days of the week, why not the small and medium shops?,” he said.
“These shops should be given the choice to remain open on all seven days of the week on voluntary basis,” he added.
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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