Entertainment
‘Alexa gaana sunao’ Indians top request to voice assistant
Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant has completed three years in India, and as per company officials more customers in non-metro cities have purchased an Echo device, accounting for over 50 per cent of users in the country in 2020. Amazon also claimed that India’s interactions with Alexa increased 67% last year. Further, customers asked Alexa to control a smart home gadget 8.6 lakh times every day.
While ‘gana sunao‘ or ‘play a song’ was the top request to Alexa at 17 lakh per day, there were some quirky ones as well from the audience in India. For one, customers said “I love you” to Alexa 19,000 times a day in 2020, which is up 1200 per cent from 2019, according to the company. There were also 6000 requests per day asking Alexa ‘Will you marry me’.
Customers put in requests for a ‘joke’ around 9000 times per day. There were 19,000 requests per day asking Alexa to ‘kahani sunao‘ or tell a story, while requests to make an animal sound were at 43,000 times a day.
Be it the Echo device in the living room, 100+ Alexa built-in devices or your favourite smartphone, it is heart-warming to see users across the length and breadth of the country across age groups find value and adopt Alexa in their daily lives”, Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, Amazon India said.
“For us it is always Day 1 as we learn from our customers and continue to add new features, improving Alexa’s understanding on topics that matter to users locally,” he added. As part of its third anniversary celebrations, Amazon is also announcing a sale on Alexa devices starting 12 midnight on February 15, for 24 hours sellers.
According to Amazon, songs like Shree Hanuman Chalisa, Shaitan Ka Saala, and Baby Shark are amongst the top five most requested songs on Alexa.
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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