The number of smartphone users in India is expected to almost double by 2022 from 47 cr registered at the end of 2017, a joint study by ASSOCHAM and PwC said. Fueled by cheap data and the explosion of ‘over the top’ services, the total number of smartphones will hit 86 cr by 2022, which […]
Bharti Airtel has introduced a competitor to Youtube, which accounts for more than half of India’s mobile internet consumption, with the launch of Wynk Tube — a Youtube like app that will focus more on music and music videos. Unlike Youtube, which does not let its free users switch to an audio only mode, Wynk […]
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel updated its TV app by adding a new section for election coverage and incorporating content from the ‘Editor Ji’ platform founded by former NDTV CEO Vikram Chandra. Airtel TV app users will now have access to exclusive election news bulletins from the video news app, Editor Ji, which is funded by […]
India’s largest smartphone maker Xiaomi has launched Mi Pay, its payment service, in India, marking the first time the service has been expanded beyond its home market of China. The company will use the National Payment Corporation of India’s UPI and Bharat Bill payment network for its core functionality. The company has tied up with […]
ICICI Lombard, one of India’s leading private sector general insurance companies, said it has entered into a strategic partnership with one of India’s largest retail payment platform MobiKwik to provide cyber-insurance cover. The newly formed partnership aims to provide the customers protection against unauthorized and fraudulent transactions online across bank accounts, debit/credit cards and mobile […]
The Delhi High Court today dismissed a petition by a lawyer’s organization, Justice For Rights, seeking censoring of online content such as Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Vikings and Sacred Games. The petition, filed late last year, claimed that such videos constituted “unregulated, uncertified, sexually explicit, vulgar, profane, and legally restricted content”. The lawyers wanted the […]
PhonePe, the payment app backed by Flipkart, announced that it has crossed the 1 mln merchants milestone and plans to add another five million this year. This is likely to help the company narrow the gap with market leader PayTM, which had an estimated 10 mln (1 cr) merchants in its network as of late […]
Reliance Jio has pulled its enormously popular Jio Music app and replaced it with JioSaavn, a new app based largely on Saavn, a competitor that the company had acquired in March. Users who have enabled auto-updating of their apps will be upgraded to the new application automatically. With over 100 mln (10 cr) downloads, Jio […]
Hathway, one of India’s top cable feed providers, said it will launch its Smart Hub, a smart set-top-box that will run Google’s Android operating system, in the market next month. This will make it the second big player to come on-board the Android TV platform, a special version of Android OS that is customized to […]
Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries group, today said that his company is working on creating a pan-India e-commerce platform that will help small, offline shops compete with players like Amazon and Flipkart. The platform will work by making the inventory of small shops available for purchase online using a sophisticated web and app interface […]
Zee5, the content app from the Zee Group, has joined the NetRange, an app store found on televisions manufactured by global TV makers such as Philips, Grundig, HiSense, Thomson, Skyworth, Sharp and TCL. With this, the Zee5 app will become instantly available on lakhs of smart TVs across the world. “The ZEE5 app will be […]
Dish TV, India’s largest direct-to-home satellite television service, said it will send out software upgrades to over 4 mln (40 lakh) of its users that will enable them to install apps to watch Internet content on their TV by December. “There are almost 4 million boxes that we have which we can convert into connected […]
Star India has agreed to share the feed of cricket matches involving India with Reliance Jio’s live TV app JioTV. Till now, JioTV users had to install Star’s Hotstar app to watch any of the network’s sports channels. The sharing agreement is valid for five years, said Reliance Jio, without divulging the financial details behind […]
Airtel and Netflix announced an expansion of their partnership in India through which the telecom operator will sell and promote Netflix content to its customers. Airtel TV, the video app from the operator, will have a dedicated row of Netflix content. It is not clear how much of the content will be made available on […]
Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s minister for law and information technology, said the government has got ‘good response’ from WhatsApp for its proposal to install a monitoring mechanism on the platform. The government has been pushing WhatsApp to put up a monitoring mechanism that would send out alerts when messages on any one subject starts going […]
The mysterious addition of the former hotline of UID Authority of India, which spooked out Android users by mysteriously appearing on their phones, was hardcoded into the Android set-up program, Google has said. Responding to concerns of users’ phones being hacked by some secret agency, which then ‘loaded’ UIDAI’s helpline number, a Google spokesperson apologized […]
Reliance Jio and State Bank of India today announced further deepening of their financial relationship, including deeper penetration of SBI services into Jio’s customer care app MyJio. “MyJio, one of India’s largest over-the-top (OTT) mobile applications will now bring in financial services capabilities of SBI and Jio Payments Bank,” the telecom operator said. In return, […]
Reliance Jio’s delays in ‘going pay’ with its content suite seems to be giving rivals like Bharti Airtel pause for thought as far as their content plans are concerned. Jio unveiled a large suite of content applications when it launched its telecom service two years ago, prompting rivals like Airtel and Idea Cellular to draw […]
India’s Information Technology Department today unveiled a new plan of action to combat fake news that would require foreign social media firms like Facebook, Twitter and Google to establish offices in India and actively help in flagging and tracking down people who post troublesome messages online. Ravi Shankar Prasad also said WhatsApp, in particular, has […]
India’s cable company stocks have fallen by about 15%-25% since Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom company by volumes, yesterday announced the commencement of its long-awaited fiber broadband and TV service from August 15. It is feared that the company’s entry can lead to widespread shutdowns and losses in the cable and broadband industry, similar to […]
