News Broadcasting
Portable gaming revenue to grow to $2.7 billion
MUMBAI: The global portable gaming industry will witness a boom in the coming five years. Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation has announced that the audience for portable gamers will grow from 23 million in 2003 to 43 million in 2009.
Revenue will grow from $1.6 billion last year to $2.7 billion in 2009.
The report Portable Games Devices – Forecasting Growth in Anticipation of Intensifying Competition has defined the addressable audience of portable gamers. One of the categories is the users of dedicated game devices like Nintendo’s Gameboy.
Gamers that play more than five hours per week on their cellular phones is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 16 per cent through 2009. This growth will be fuelled by the proliferation of cellular phones that are better equipped to support games. The report elaborates on the factors that will determine success in the portable games marketplace.
JupiterResearch VP and research director Michael Gartenberg added, “Competition is the major driver of growth over the next five years. As device manufacturers and content developers cater to broader audiences, we will see some amazing things happen.
“There’s a gap in ownership between console and handheld devices. This allows for an untapped market as well as substantial opportunities in the age brackets from the upper teens to 34 years both male and female”.
JupiterResearch is an international research advisory organisation. It specialises in business and technology market research in 18 business areas and 14 vertical markets
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
