Entertainment
Om Puri to get lifetime achievement award at IFFP
New Delhi: Veteran actor Om Puri will be felicitated with the lifetime achievement award at the first edition of the International Film Festival of Prayag (IFFP), Allahabad.
He will be honoured at the event’s awards function Feb 28, next year.
The 65-year-old, whose previous accolades include a lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Filmfare Awards and the Padmashri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, in 1990, will receive the award for his prestigious and remarkable contribution to the film industry.
“It’s a great honour for us to welcome a personality like Om Puri at the very first year. We are very fortunate to get his support. We will honour him with the lifetime achievement award at this event as our respect towards him,” festival director Abhishek Arun said in a statement.
Hosted by Z&Z Media Pvt. Ltd., IFFP will take place in Allahabad Feb 26-28, next year. The festival aims to promote cinema, especially in the country’s north-west region.
“The principle objective of the IFFP is to promote and encourage awareness, appreciation and understanding of the art of cinema especially in this region. Filmmaking professionals and students belonging to the northern region of our country will have a new platform,” said the festival’s founder Hasan Haider.
Om Puri, a Punjab-born talent, is a graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and the National School of Drama, Delhi. He is among the few Indian actors to represent the country at the international level.
In a career of over four decades, Om Puri has portrayed varied roles in films like “Ghashiram Kotwal”, “Arohan” and “Ardh Satya”. He featured in the 1982 classic “Gandhi”, and also starred in various international films like “My Son The Fanatic”, “East Is East”, “Charlie Wilson’s War” and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”.
Entertainment
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
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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