iWorld
MX Player emerges as top entertainment app of 2019 in India: Report
MUMBAI: MX Player has emerged as the top entertainment app in India, according to the annual FICCI Report on India’s Media and Entertainment Sector titled ‘The Era of Consumer A.R.T’. The ranking is based on apps classified under entertainment categories on iOS and Google Play. The entertainment streaming app that launched in February 2019 has dominated the market in terms of Monthly Active Users, followed by Hotstar, Tik Tok, BookMyShow, Jio TV, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, SonyLiv, Airtel TV, and Voot.
Currently, MX Player has 280 million MAUs globally and 175 million MAUs in India.
Commenting on this honour, MX Player CEO Karan Bedi said, “We’re a young brand and I’m delighted that in this short time, we’ve emerged as the #1 entertainment app of 2019 in India. Our scale and penetration remain unparalleled and our aim is to keep innovating and experimenting with genres, stories, languages, characters to be able to cater to every palette, enhancing our product and making sure that users continue engaging with a fresh experience, every time they log into MX Player. Being an AVOD platform, we also offer our clients unparalleled reach across the length and breadth of India.”
India ranks as one of the fastest-growing app markets globally, where entertainment apps are driving significant consumer engagement. According to the report, total downloads among M&E categories grew seven per cent while total sessions grew across all M&E app categories with Entertainment growing by 31 per cent, music by 81 per cent and news and magazines by 40 per cent. Games grew by 36 per cent and MX Player recently added a gaming section that hosts high familiarity and easy to learn hyper casual games which users can enjoy even without data or internet access, and play in a competitive format.
Staying true to the promise of providing ‘Everytainment’ – the platform is emerging as the one stop shop for all things entertainment with its best in class offline video playing capabilities, critically acclaimed original series, a large online streaming repository of over 1,50,000 hours of premium content including live channels and catch-up TV, audio music and gaming.
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
