MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS
Spiritual apps get blessed with more users, investors post Covid
Post-pandemic spiritual and astrology apps have experienced a significant resurgence, benefiting from increased online engagement and a growing interest in spiritual practices. Startups such as Vama.app are seizing this opportunity by offering virtual pujas, temple darshans, and astrology services, marking a notable shift in consumer behaviour towards digital spiritual experiences.
Threads turns one with 175 million users. What’s driving the growth?
Meta’s Threads, launched July 5, 2023, by Mark Zuckerberg, hits 175 million monthly users, challenging Elon Musk’s X. Despite X's growth, Threads steadily climbs. It tested the ActivityPub protocol, launched an API, started a fact-checking program, posts appear on Mastodon. Instagram promotion boosts users amid political content policy criticism.
India among most active countries for Meta's Threads
Meta's Threads boasts 175 million users, with India leading. Mark Zuckerberg highlights its impact. Cricket, like IPL, T20 World Cup, is popular, with 200 creators and players such as Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, and Suresh Raina. Launched in July 2023, it gained 100 million sign-ups in a week. Other topics include film, TV, and OTT.
Threads hits 175 million users on first anniversary
Threads, Meta's alternative to X (formerly Twitter), has hit 175 million monthly users a year after its out-of-the-blue launch. Threads, which hit app stores on July 5 last year, is a spin-off of Instagram and is intended to be a rival to X, formerly known as Twitter, after that platform alienated many users and advertisers following Elon Musk's purchase in 2022.
Tariff hikes may slow migration of feature phone users to smartphones: Experts
Recent steep tariff hikes by major Indian telecom companies are set to bolster the base of 4G feature phone users, shielding them from significant cost increases compared to smartphone users. This move is expected to slow down the migration to 5G smartphones. Industry experts suggest that while data consumption among 5G users remains strong, the tariff adjustments may lead smartphone brands to offer bundled data deals to spur sales. Overall, the impact on consumer behavior post-hike is anticipated to be moderated by entrenched data usage patterns.
Hackers breach BSNL again, second time in six months
This is the second time in six month where BSNL has suffered a data breach. Athenian Tech chief executive Kanishk Gaur told ET, the breach involved more than 278 GB of data from the state-owned telecom operation, including server snapshots, which can be misused for SIM cloning and potentially more severe criminal activities like extortion.
- Go To Page 1
Telco revenues surged to Rs 2.3 lakh crore in FY24: CLSA
The Indian telecom industry's gross revenue surged 87% to Rs 2.39 lakh crore in FY24, driven by the launch of services by Reliance Jio. Jio and Bharti Airtel gained subscribers at the expense of Vodafone Idea. The two top telcos now control 78% of sectoral revenue, expected to rise to 83% by FY26. Vi's revenue market share fell to 15.7%, while Airtel and Jio saw revenue growth, with Jio leading at 41.4% RMS.
Telecom sector revenue surges 87% to Rs 2.4 lk cr in FY24: Report
Telecom sector revenue in FY24 reached Rs 2,39,900 crore ($29 billion), an 87% increase from its FY19 low following Reliance Jio's market entry and about 40% higher than FY16 figures, according to a CLSA report. This surge reflects the continuing subscriber gains by Jio and Airtel at Vodafone Idea's expense, with Jio and Airtel now controlling 78% of the sector's revenue combined, a figure CLSA expects to rise to 83% by FY26.
Jio outpaces Airtel in 4G/5G user additions during April
Active, or visitor location register (VLR) data put out every month by Trai indicates the number of mobile users regularly using a mobile network. As a result, Jio’s active user base jumped to 433.42 million users, while Airtel and Vodafone Idea’s active user base declined to 383.32 million and 192.64 million users respectively.
Overall ADTO declines MoM as new demat accounts rise: Motilal Oswal
In May 2024, demat account additions surged by 36 lakh, but the overall average daily turnover (ADTO) in the financial markets declined by 3% to Rs 433 lakh crore. While F&O ADTO decreased by 3%, cash ADTO rose by 5.5%. Active users on NSE increased to 4.29 crore.
Elon Musk’s X starts hiding users' likes on the platform
Elon Musk announced on X that the social media platform will hide likes of users, although the post author will be able to see who has liked their content. This is to personalise users' feed better, an X executive said, adding that public likes are incentivising bad behaviour among the users.
Can you opt out of Meta's AI scraping? Sort of
Meta announced the expansion of its AI services globally, using public information to train its AI starting June 26, sparking privacy concerns in Europe. Users in the U.S. were already subject to this practice. The program's future expansion remains uncertain.
From phones to fries: Flipkart users may soon be able to order food via ONDC
Flipkart users may soon be able to order from various fast-food outlets and restaurants, such as Dominos and McDonalds, from Flipkart app. This development is noteworthy because the government started ONDC to counter the dominance of Amazon and Flipkart. Recently several top Flipkart executives met ONDC officials for the integration.
Temu will have to comply with tougher EU online content rules, EU says
Temu, a fast-fashion e-commerce retailer under the PDD Group, is required to comply with strict EU online content rules as a very large online platform (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), facing penalties of up to 6% of their global annual turnover for violations.
Food delivery cos bet on existing users; Infosys CEO interview
Happy Tuesday! With user growth stagnating, Zomato and Swiggy are prodding existing customers to order more. This and more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch.
Paytm witnesses slowdown in core businesses of merchant payments, consumer lending
In the first four months of 2024, Paytm’s user base shrank by 24% to 80 million, while the count of its active devices dropped by about 1 million over February and March on account of attrition, according to its quarterly filings with the stock exchanges. User attrition happened as a result of regulatory action by the RBI, it said.
‘Gen AI is a friend, not a foe’...is Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy’s message to critics of the modern technology
NR Narayana Murthy and S ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan discuss the transformative potential of Gen AI, the challenges of technology misuse, the benefits of technology adoption in banking, and India's potential to compete with China in business environment.
Online platforms take to gamification to boost user engagement
For instance, Linkedin says 72% of its surveyed users said playing games such as Pinpoint, Crossclimb, Queens etc. Zomato on the other hand seems to have perfected the art of customer conversions with its Zomato Premier League (ZPL). The gamification strategy is where hyper-casual, tap-and-play games are used to engage customers, speed up sales and enhance revenue.
GameStop, AMC slide further as meme stocks rally tapers off
Retail darlings GameStop and AMC continued their slide for a second straight session on Thursday, as the euphoria over the return of "Roaring Kitty", who was the central figure in 2021 meme stock rally, fizzles out.
OpenAI unveils new AI model, releases GPT-4o to all users for free
OpenAI researchers showed off ChatGPT's new voice assistant capabilities. In one demonstration, the ChatGPT voice assistant was able to read out a bedtime story in different voices, emotions and tones.
Instacart partners with Uber Eats to offer restaurant deliveries
San Francisco-based Instacart said Tuesday that its U.S. shoppers will see a "Restaurants" tab in the company's app in the coming weeks. Restaurant orders will be delivered by Uber Eats drivers.
MNP number shows competition intense as Jio, Airtel fight for Vi users
Telecom companies compete fiercely for market share. Vodafone Idea struggles without 5G. Airtel and Jio focus on service quality and rural expansion. Broadband users increase, with Jio leading the growth.
The rise of Airchat & growing debate over navigating Internet with voice: can it gain momentum?
Voice input technology faces challenges despite widespread adoption in internet products. Smart speaker shipments decline, while the voice recognition market is poised for significant growth. Users with visual disabilities encounter accuracy issues with voice commands.
Spotify's monthly user numbers miss estimates on lower promotions
First-quarter MAUs rose 19%, but missed Spotify's own guidance and a median of analysts' forecasts of 618 million. It also forecast current-quarter MAUs at 631 million, missing estimates of 636.3 million, according to IBES data from LSEG.
New X users may have to pay to like, post; Elon Musk calls it the only way to curb bots
New users on social media platform X may need to pay a small annual fee for posting after the website upgrade. AI and troll farms prompt the change. Mixed reactions include concerns about freedom of speech.
Jio added more 4G, 5G users vs Airtel in January: Trai
In January 2024, Airtel gained more active mobile users than Jio, adding 3.55 million compared to Jio's 1.1 million. However, Jio attracted more high-paying 4G and 5G users than Airtel during the same period. Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to lose both active mobile users and 3G/4G users.
Spotify's monthly user growth, subscribers beat expectations
The music streaming company has ventured into podcasts and audiobooks as it seeks to grow its user base to 1 billion by 2030. It has also raised prices for its subscribers and laid off thousands of employees to boost profits and increase efficiency.
Gen Z and millennials constituted over 70% of monthly active users on ShareChat this year
A total of 287 million audio chat room sessions were hosted in a month. Further, it said a total of 14 billion minutes of audio was live-streamed on ShareChat in the past year.
Game streaming startup Loco lays off 40 staffers
According to multiple Loco employees ET spoke to, the company’s daily active user (DAUs) base has seen a dip recently and the launch of its VIP programme is yet to generate noteworthy interest from users. However, Ashwin Suresh, one of the founders, refuted any drop in Loco's DAU.
Load More
