The world's largest mobile-first community and one of the most downloaded mobile applications, mig33 is rapidly gaining a foothold in the Indian market.
With registered users from over 100 cities, India has emerged as one of the fastest growing markets for mig33 and saw a double – digit growth in downloads from India for the quarter ended June 2010.The application has seen a majority of growth and an uptick in downloads from Tier II and Tier III towns in India.
mig33 is the world’s biggest mobile-first chat and gaming community. In India, mig33 is the most-downloaded free application on Airtel’s App Store. Its members engage in vibrant chat communities, share photos, send gifts, play games, post on each others profiles, join groups, create avatars and much more. It is optimized to work on practically any internet enabled mobile phone in India, even low-end handsets.
Mr Mohit Gundecha, Director of Business Development and Head of India said “We have grown by word of mouth in India, mig33 provides a perfect platform for youth in small townships and cities , interested and excited about making friends across the world and playing real time games .”
mig33 is used extensively to connect its wide-spread community of Indians to their homeland. For example, many native Gujaratis in Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa connect with locals in their hometowns in Gujarat via mig33.“The mig33 community spreads far and wide across India to small towns like Bharuch, Vapi, Valsad, and Cochin. Users even organize mig33 offline meets, which underscores their loyalty to the brand,” added Gundecha.
mig33 has several million users in India, providing entertainment services beyond instant messaging, including social games and virtual gifts. Its player-to-player games like ‘mig wars’ and ‘heads and tails’ are especially popular in India, while leaderboards and virtual currency has led to the stickiness of the application and user loyalty.
India, a mobile-first country, is experiencing a wide penetration of low-end mobile phones, and sub Rs.100 data plans. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, growth in wireless data services subscribers increased by 19 percent for quarter ended 31 Mar, 2010, which far outpaces the growth of broadband subscribers. Mobile community applications are well positioned for the Indian market and mig33 has the first-mover advantage in the space. mig33 is user-friendly to 2.5G bandwidth, and compatible with low-end feature phones.
“Like a lot of mobile services, we have active users in over 200 countries, but we’ve especially thrived in mobile-first markets where the mobile phone is – and will continue to be -- the first internet experience for millions and millions of people. The Indian market is thriving and has responded very well to mig33 and the concept of social mobile community,” said Gundecha.
With 40 million registered users worldwide, mig33 operates on more than 2,000 different mobile handsets worldwide. In the last several months, mig33 has released over 1,000 new virtual gifts and avatar items, several new games, and unveiled new WAP services and web platforms.
