MAM
Over 150 mn mobile music downloads took place in 2011: Airtel Mobitude 2011
MUMBAI: India loves melody and clocked over 150 million mobile music downloads in 2011. After the success of Munni and Sheila in 2010, Chammak Challo from Ra.One was the most downloaded song and video of the year.
‘Kolaveri Di‘ joined the top sellers charts by recording 210,000 music downloads in 18 days of launch.
Movies dominated the category of imagery, which saw over 19 million wallpaper downloads in the last year.
Telecom company Bharti Airtel has released its annual survey of customer preferences- Airtel Mobitude 2011. This is the only annual survey of its kind that captures customer preferences through their mobile usage patterns and trends among customers across India. Summarizing the findings of India‘s “mobile attitude”for the third consecutive year, Airtel Mobitude reflects the verdict of the Indian masses basis an in-depth study of data capturing all content downloaded round the year by its over 170 million plus mobile customers in the country.
This survey is compiled at the end of every calendar year and brings out results across various categories including top cine stars and sports icons, most downloaded songs, various sports, music downloads etc. A new trend that is fast gaining popularity is the significant increase in consumer desire to interact with the movie stars, favorite singers and cricketers through platforms like Talk2me and Live Concert.
Bharti Airtel CMO consumer business N Rajaram said, “Reflecting the preferences of the largest mobile user‘s base in India, the data shared under Airtel Mobitude is drawn from the repository of paid downloads adding to the authenticity of the survey. It clearly highlights the rising demand for data services being driven by technologies like 3G and proliferation of smart phones. Today, the mobile is a major source of entertainment and information – be it a user in a large town or small village. For the third consecutive year, we are proud to bring to you choices and preferences of the India of today, through Airtel Mobitude 2011.”
According to Airtel Mobitude 2011 – In the entertainment space, the ‘Kolaveri Di‘ song has topped the Indian mobile charts within 18 days of its launch. The song has beaten all previous record holders like ‘Munni Badnaam Hui ‘and ‘Tere Mast Mast Nain‘.
In the Bollywood segment, Katrina Kaif and King Khan maintain the leading positions in the category of images downloaded this year. Despite several new entrants in Bollywood – Imran Khan and Jacqueline Fernandes were the only new comers to feature among the top 5 categories.
In the Hollywood segment, Kim Kardashian and King of pop – Michael Jackson holds the top position in the category of images downloaded.
Amongst sport stars – Sachin Tendulkar clearly continued to be India‘s favourite, followed by Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni. Sania Mirza climbs to the fifth spot followed by Maria Sharapova.
According to the survey, approximately 20 million images and wallpapers were downloaded by Airtel mobile users in the last one year.
Brands
Google secures AP discom licence to power $15bn Vizag AI hub
First-of-its-kind move gives tech giant grid control for massive 1GW campus
VISAKHAPATNAM: Google has secured a rare electricity distribution company licence in Andhra Pradesh, marking a decisive shift from being just a power consumer to becoming a power distributor for its upcoming mega data centre hub in Visakhapatnam.
The move effectively rewrites the rulebook for hyperscalers in India. Instead of relying on state utilities, Google will be able to procure electricity directly from generators, including its own renewable sources. This not only cuts out intermediaries but also gives the company tighter control over supply, reliability and long-term costs.
For a business where electricity can account for up to 60 per cent of operating expenses, the economics are hard to ignore. Even more critical is uptime. Data centres demand near-perfect reliability, and owning the distribution layer allows Google to manage outages and load balancing with far greater precision.
At the heart of the plan is a sprawling 1-gigawatt data centre ecosystem spread across more than 600 acres in three locations near Vizag. With an estimated investment of $15 billion over five years, the project is set to become India’s largest single foreign direct investment and Google’s biggest AI-focused facility outside the United States.
The campus is being designed with artificial intelligence workloads in mind, housing the company’s custom tensor processing units to power services such as Gemini, Search and Google Cloud. In scale, the planned capacity is comparable to powering a small city.
Google is not building alone. It has partnered with Adani Infrastructure to develop the physical campuses, while Bharti Airtel will set up an international subsea cable landing station. This connectivity backbone is expected to link the hub directly to a dozen countries, ensuring low latency for global data traffic.
Vizag’s coastal location plays a key role in that strategy. It enables direct access to subsea cables and provides the large volumes of water needed for cooling data centre operations. Equally important is policy backing from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, which fast-tracked approvals and granted the uncommon discom licence to anchor the investment.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for April 28, 2026, with phased commissioning expected to begin by July 2028.
The broader signal is clear. As AI workloads surge, hyperscalers are no longer content plugging into existing infrastructure. They are beginning to build and control it. In Vizag, Google is not just setting up a data centre, it is wiring up its own future.
