Entertainment
‘Sui Dhaaga…’ threads delicate pastiche of joy, sorrow
Film: “Sui Dhaaga – Made In India”; Director: Sharat Katariya; Cast: Varun Dhawan, Anushka Sharma; Rating: ****
After I saw Sharat Katariya’s debut film “Dum Laga Ke Haisha”, I hoped the director won’t sell out to the star system. But his second film starred a market-friendly lead star.
I hoped Kataria’s second film won’t lose the charm and innocence of the first. Providentially, “Sui Dhaaga” loses none of the delicacy and sting even while providing space to its leads to surrender to their characters.
Varun Dhawan surrenders to his character Mauji as though the role was tailor-made for him. Never afraid to look less than heroic on-screen, Varun furnishes his tailor’s character with a rugged candour. This is an actor and a character who are so sincere to their craft that they don’t mind crawling on the floor if that’s what it takes to stay afloat.
Varun’s performance is filled with a smothered disappointment. It takes his quietly confident and deceptively docile wife Mamta (Anushka) to bring out the suppressed ambition in her husband.
I am afraid Anushka Sharma, a fine actress in the best of times, is just not equipped to get all the intricacies of her character tightly into place. Anushka’s is a ‘look-I-can-do-it’ performance filled with a kind of phoney Jaya Bhaduri-angst that works well within the film’s claustrophobic working-class atmosphere.
The aspirational narrative of how Mauji finds his groove with considerable help from his street-wise wife, works like a charm because all the performers are solidly sincere. But most of all, “Sui Dhaaga” wins our hearts because the director never milks the milieu for soppy sentimentality.
Nor does he swing the other way to make the middle-class ambience a place to celebrate misery. The tone is constantly energetic, yet poised.
Katariyaa is neither awed by stillness nor intimidated by noise. He listens to the heartbeat of the heartland. We listen.
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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