CHENNAI: Ravi Kumar - a cricket buff and a techie whose job entails a lot of travel - is hooked on to his mobile phone these days. With the World Cup (WC) in progress, his phone is his only way of getting quick updates.
"I will be closely following the World Cup, especially India's progress. With so many variety of cricket apps available, I can easily get scores or watch highlights of the matches while travelling. When bored, I also play some WC tournament-like cricket games," said Kumar.
A spokesperson of Informate Mobile Intelligence, a telecom research company, said there was a 102% increase in access of cricket sites on mobiles in IPL 2010 as compared to the 2009 season. "We believe this World Cup would have an even bigger following on smartphones," he said.
Others echo that view. "The downloads during a big tournament like World Cup are anywhere from 50% to 100% higher than dry days. During the last IPL, our cricket game clocked around 5 lakh to 7.5 lakh downloads," said Abhijit Jayapal, CEO of Mumbai-based Synqua Games. The mobile apps company developed a gaming app - 'Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup' - which runs on BlackBerry and Nokia.
If cricket is the religion of India, smartphones could very well turn out to be the new altar. "Our cricket feed aggregator app CricketWC2011 is currently No. 3 in sports category of iTunes app store for India. The Java version of the same app was released two weeks back and clocked 20,000 downloads in the first week itself. We will be going live on the BlackBerry platform in a couple of days," says Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, founder and CEO of Divum, a mobile development company in Bangalore.
On a global scale too, the greatest interest in cricket apps is shown mainly by Indians. "We currently have 2.5 lakh active users for our CricThrill app. Close to 95% of our users are from India. Within the country, we see pan-India usage with no particular region clearly dominating showing the widespread popularity of cricket," said M A Ramachandran, head of mobile operations at Chennai-based KrishCricket, founded by former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Information apps, Ramachandran said, fare better than games in terms of downloads. They are generally in a 60:40 ratio.
Apart from these developers, most of the big brands in cricket like ESPN, CricInfo and CricBuzz have also launched apps, either independently or in collaboration with app development houses like Divum, which designed an app for ESPN. Even regulator International Cricket Council (ICC) has released an official World Cup app for its WC 2011 tournament. Mobile phone companies like Nokia have also jumped into the fray and tied up with ESPN to release an ESPN widget exclusively for their flagship smartphone device N8.
Sethuraman said Divum is now getting around 5,000 downloads per week. In periods between tournaments, the figure hovers around a few hundreds. "This trend of more downloads starts around three weeks before a major tournament. Everybody launches their apps in this period. We started planning our own app in January and released it close to World Cup," he said.
The downloads will peak around mid of the World Cup when decisive matches begin. Awareness of mobile games and apps also goes up during this period. "We are ramping up promotional activities in this period with targeted mailers and mobile advertising," said Jayapal of Synqua Games.
"I will be closely following the World Cup, especially India's progress. With so many variety of cricket apps available, I can easily get scores or watch highlights of the matches while travelling. When bored, I also play some WC tournament-like cricket games," said Kumar.
A spokesperson of Informate Mobile Intelligence, a telecom research company, said there was a 102% increase in access of cricket sites on mobiles in IPL 2010 as compared to the 2009 season. "We believe this World Cup would have an even bigger following on smartphones," he said.
Others echo that view. "The downloads during a big tournament like World Cup are anywhere from 50% to 100% higher than dry days. During the last IPL, our cricket game clocked around 5 lakh to 7.5 lakh downloads," said Abhijit Jayapal, CEO of Mumbai-based Synqua Games. The mobile apps company developed a gaming app - 'Ultimate Cricket '11 World Cup' - which runs on BlackBerry and Nokia.
If cricket is the religion of India, smartphones could very well turn out to be the new altar. "Our cricket feed aggregator app CricketWC2011 is currently No. 3 in sports category of iTunes app store for India. The Java version of the same app was released two weeks back and clocked 20,000 downloads in the first week itself. We will be going live on the BlackBerry platform in a couple of days," says Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, founder and CEO of Divum, a mobile development company in Bangalore.
On a global scale too, the greatest interest in cricket apps is shown mainly by Indians. "We currently have 2.5 lakh active users for our CricThrill app. Close to 95% of our users are from India. Within the country, we see pan-India usage with no particular region clearly dominating showing the widespread popularity of cricket," said M A Ramachandran, head of mobile operations at Chennai-based KrishCricket, founded by former India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Information apps, Ramachandran said, fare better than games in terms of downloads. They are generally in a 60:40 ratio.
Apart from these developers, most of the big brands in cricket like ESPN, CricInfo and CricBuzz have also launched apps, either independently or in collaboration with app development houses like Divum, which designed an app for ESPN. Even regulator International Cricket Council (ICC) has released an official World Cup app for its WC 2011 tournament. Mobile phone companies like Nokia have also jumped into the fray and tied up with ESPN to release an ESPN widget exclusively for their flagship smartphone device N8.
Sethuraman said Divum is now getting around 5,000 downloads per week. In periods between tournaments, the figure hovers around a few hundreds. "This trend of more downloads starts around three weeks before a major tournament. Everybody launches their apps in this period. We started planning our own app in January and released it close to World Cup," he said.
The downloads will peak around mid of the World Cup when decisive matches begin. Awareness of mobile games and apps also goes up during this period. "We are ramping up promotional activities in this period with targeted mailers and mobile advertising," said Jayapal of Synqua Games.
