India leapfrogs to third spot in global gaming installs

HYDERABAD: Unity Technologies, creator of a popular creation engine that reaches nearly three billion devices worldwide, on Thursday said India is now ranked third in global gaming installs, surpassing Brazil and Russia.

Quoting Unity Analytics, a company statement said the latest market research shows India has risen from the ninth position in January this year to the third spot in global install rankings, surpassing Brazil and Russia to become one of the world's largest gaming markets.

This is due to a spike in India's adoption of high- end mobile devices with larger RAM size. In one year, mobile device count with 1GB RAM has grown from 31.6 million to 100 million in October 2017, it said.

"Unity analysed and studied the ongoing market trends and development in the Indian mobile industry. Based on our findings, we believe the mass adoption of high-end mobile devices will give the Indian gaming ecosystem ample opportunity to innovate and provide compelling content to development platforms," Quentin Staes-polet, Director of South Asia Pacific at Unity Technologies, said.

"Driven by the massive rush of cost-effective, highend smartphones and the 4G revolution that began last year, the Indian mobile gaming market has been expanding at a rapid pace," said Rajesh Rao, Chairman of Nasscom Gaming Forum. NEW DELHI: IT firm Tech Mahindra on Thursday said it has partnered Unity Technologies to set up a Centre of Excellence (COE) for immersive reality technologies.

The COE will target communication, media and entertainment segments, a statement on Thursday said.

Unity Technologies has produced the creation engine that reaches nearly 3 billion devices and powers nearly two-thirds of all Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) content. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.

The COE will be located at Tech Mahindra's campus in Bengaluru. The solutions will be completely developed by Tech Mahindra using Unity 3D as a platform, the statement said.

The facility will also focus on catalysing and facilitating training, consulting, advice and research to the developers in the domain, it added. "Our customers in gaming and media and entertainment industry are seeking more options around immersive experiences," Tech Mahindra Senior Vice-president and Global Head (Marketing) Indraneel Ganguli said. NEW DELHI: The IT ministry is constituting industryspecific groups in areas such as mobiles, automotive electronics and consumer electronics that will offer inputs for the new electronics manufacturing policy in the works.

A senior official of the Ministry of Electronics and IT said 6-7 such specialised groups will be set up over the next 1-2 days to look at the manufacturing push in each of these areas.

While domestic manufacturing has caught on in a big way in segments like mobile handsets and consumer electronics, the new policy will focus on driving value addition in each of these areas, said the official who did not wish to be named.

The official noted that "significant progress" has already been made with regard to electronics manufacturing in the country, and setting up of new mobile factories, increased investments and several manufacturing firms making their stock market debut were all "positive signs" for the industry.

The new policy push will aim to create an ecosystem of manufacturing in the country, enable India to become a significant global player in some of these categories.

The groups being set up will have industry representatives to drive sector-specific "interventions" for the new policy, the source said, adding that each group will be anchored by a government official.

The industry groups being formed encompass areas like mobiles, medical electronics, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, solar, and electronics manufacturing services (EMS), among others.

"These groups will come out with sector-specific inputs which can be considered for incorporation in the larger electronics policy," the official added.

Over the last two years, India has seen significant growth in production of mobile handsets, LED (Light Emitting Diode) products and televisions.