Google said on Friday it will start removing apps from its Play Store in India if developers fail to comply with its payment policy, taking a definitive stand weeks after the top Indian court granted the Android-maker with relief.
Without naming them, Google said 10 companies in India, including “many well-established ones,” have not paid Google Play’s fee despite being provided with three years to prepare.
“After giving these developers more than three years to prepare, including three weeks after the Supreme Court’s order, we are taking necessary steps to ensure our policies are applied consistently across the ecosystem, as we do for any form of policy violation globally,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“Enforcement of our policy, when necessary, can include removal of non-compliant apps from Google Play.”This is a developing story.
More to come.
India has approved allocating up to $15.2 billion (1.26 trillion Indian rupees) to build three new semiconductor plants, including its first semiconductor fab facility — part of the country’s big bid to take on China, Taiwan and other countries in the chip race.
On Thursday, the Indian cabinet approved the country’s first semiconductor fab facility set up by the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group and Taiwan’s Power Chip, which will be established in the Dholera region of Gujarat.
The Indian IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters at a media briefing in New Delhi that the construction work for the semiconductor fab will start within 100 days.
“A typical semiconductor fab, construction is a three-four-year time frame.
This will be the country’s third semiconductor unit and will be able to produce 48 million chips per day.
Cricket match streaming has been the prime driver of new users for streaming platforms in India.
By securing numerous cricket rights, Disney and Reliance have left rival services with limited content options to attract fans.
“The 2023-27 IPL broadcasting now sit under the JV – Viacom 18 has digital streaming rights (won for US$2.9bn) while Star has TV broadcasting rights for US$2.8bn.
Combined with about 8% of the TV market that Viacom18 assumes in India, the merged operations — which will feature some 120 TV channels — will command about 49% of the broadcasting market.
In a statement Wednesday, Disney and Reliance said they will reach 750 million users in India with the merged entity.
It will be second after the space agency’s existing Satish Dhawan Space Centre, founded in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota in 1971, with two launch pads.
The spaceport will be dedicated to launching smaller launch vehicles and will be ready in about two years, ISRO chairman S Somanath said on the sidelines of the event in Tamil Nadu.
Spread over 2,350 acres, the Kulasekharapatnam spaceport will help save fuel for small rocket launches as the port can launch rockets directly south over the Indian Ocean without requiring crossing landmasses.
“This facility will play an instrumental role in accommodating the increasing launch frequency of both ISRO and the growing private space industry in the coming years.
Bhatt, director general of the Indian Space Association.
Reliance, its portfolio Viacom18 and Disney are merging their media businesses in India, creating the largest media entity in the South Asian market.
Reliance will control and own 16.34% of the joint venture, which it has valued at $8.5 billion.
Reliance, which is India’s most valuable firm, said it sees an opportunity to expand and streamline its presence in the Indian fast-growing market by merging its media assets with Disney India.
Reliance, which owns more than 60% in Viacom18, plans to invest $1.4 billion into the joint venture for its growth strategy.
The “strategic” merger of Reliance and Disney India also unites two leading Indian streamers, JioCinema and Disney+Hotstar.
Shadowfax, one of the largest logistics service providers to hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses in India, has raised $100 million in a new funding round as it clocks an yearly growth of 35%.
Shadowfax says it makes over 2 million packages delivery each day and has amassed over 3.5 million registered users.
Shadowfax operates a logistics and delivery network of over 125,000 monthly active delivery personnels, and works with numerous firms including Flipkart, Meesho and many direct-to-consumer brands.
Shadowfax is Mirae Asset’s first investment in India and the venture firm has participated in each subsequent round.
“We believe that logistics is fundamental to ecommerce and hyperlocal commerce and that it enables the growth of these markets.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and majority owner of Paytm Payments Bank, has stepped down from the board of the troubled unit days after the Indian regulator signalled continuity at the financial firm Paytm.
Paytm Payments Bank said Monday it was reconstituting the board of directors at the Paytm Payments Bank, an associate of Paytm, with the appointment of four executives — ex-Central Bank of India Chairman Srinivasan Sridhar, retired IAS officer Shri Debendranath Sarangi, former executive director of Bank of Baroda Shri Ashok Kumar Garg, and Retd.
The appointment follows the Indian central bank penalizing Paytm Payments Bank, in which Sharma owns a 51% stake, with severe business restrictions.
(Paytm owned a 49% stake in Paytm Payments Bank.)
TechCrunch reported early this month that the Indian central bank has weighed ordering a board shakeup at Paytm Payments Bank and removing some of the company officials, including Paytm founder Sharma.
Caller identity company Truecaller has launched its call recording and transcription for paid users in India, the company’s biggest market.
The recording feature will be available to premium users on both Android and iOS, with support for English and Hindi transcriptions.
In June 2023, the company introduced call recording for premium users in the U.S., and now it is expanding the feature in India.
If you are using Truecaller on Android, the app’s own dialer will show a dedicated recording button.
The app calls another recording line, and then you will have to manually merge the calls to start the recording.
The company’s iPhone revenue in India jumped 42% year-on-year in 2023 to $8.7 billion, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note on Friday.
India’s iPhone business is now larger than any standalone country in the European Union, Morgan Stanley added.
This compares to China iPhone shipments, which represented 20% of iPhone shipments and revenue in CY23 (down 1-2 points Y/Y, respectively),” the analysts wrote.
The average iPhone sold in India last year had around 260GB of memory, a 26% increase over 2022, Morgan Stanley said.
Morgan Stanley estimates the tech giant’s India revenue will reach $40 billion by 2032.
Google said Thursday it plans to roll out the SoundPod, its portable speaker designed to instantly validate and announce successful payments, to small merchants across India over the coming months.
The Google Pay expansion in India, where the company is among the mobile payment market leaders, comes even as the firm winds down some of its payments apps in the U.S.
The sound-box was invented to serve small Indian merchants unable to afford regular point-of-sale devices but accepting of UPI payments.
The company said merchants who use SoundPod to process 400 payments in a month will get $1.5 in cashback.
Reliance, India’s largest firm by market cap, also began testing a similar device at its campus last year, TechCrunch earlier reported.
