Category: Apps

With an aim to increase its user base in India, Netflix has made big changes in its plans. The company has decreased its prices between 18 to 60 percent across different plans. The new development comes after when Disney+ Hotstar and Amazon Prime increased the prices of their plans.

It is important to note that all revised plans are listed on the website and users are allowed to upgrade all packs from today (December 14th, 2021). The company also said that all users can sign up and choose the plan they wanted to use. Besides, the company said that it will upgrade the plan automatically, which is higher than the current pack.

Netflix New Plans: Check Details

The first plan of the popular steaming application is now priced at Rs. 149 per month as against Rs. 199 per month. The Basic pack is now priced at Rs. 199 instead of Rs. 499 per month earlier, while the Standard pack will cost you Rs. 499 per month. Earlier, this plan was priced at Rs. 649 per month and lastly, there is a pack of Rs. 649 per month, which was earlier priced at Rs. 799 per month.

Netflix Upgradation Offer

The company also announced that if you already have a subscription, you are allowed to choose or upgrade to high-end plans. However, those who are using Premium plans can change the plans and that will be reflected in their next billing cycle.

Netflix Plan Benefits

It is worth noting that benefits are the same as the Mobile and Basic plan offers 480p content on phones and tablets, whereas the Standard plan offers 1080p resolution and Premium pack ships content with 4K+ HDR resolution.

The content of the Mobile plan can be accessed via mobile and tablet. While Basic pack will be accessed on television, mobile, tablet, and computer. The Standard and the Premium plans are also accessible via the same platforms.

“As Indians, we love great entertainment. Whatever your mood, tastes or plan, Netflix is now even more accessible. Whether you choose Aranyak on Friday, Money Heist on Saturday, or Dhamaka and Sooryavanshi on Sunday, you can watch all of Netflix on your mobile for Rs. 149, and on any device starting at Rs. 199,” Monika Shergill, Vice President, Content, Netflix India.

With an aim to increase digital transactions in the country, the Reserve Bank Of India has announced a payment feature of features phones. Currently, all-digital transactions can be done via smartphone users and feature phones are known for making calls and sending messages.

Notably, the apex bank in its “Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Practices”, has proposed this new feature for the feature phones. However, the bank is yet to issue details about the same services.

“These products, coupled with other complementary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wide digitization. It is proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phone users. Further details will be announced shortly,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das was quoted by PTI.

“As part of the transition from LIBOR, we also look forward to the guidelines on the use of interbank rate or alternative reference rate (ARR) as benchmarks for ECB/Trade Credit,” Shankar further added.

He said that it is important to bring UPI payments to feature phone users as 44 crore users are still using the same platform out of 118 crore mobile users in the country. According to Statista this year close to 74 crores of users are using smartphones in India.

As per the RBI statement, “UPI is the single largest retail payment system in the country in terms of volume of transactions (14 crore transactions per day, October 2021). One of the initial objectives of UPI was to replace cash for low value transactions. Transaction data analysis shows that 50 percent of transactions through UPI were below RS. 200, indicating its success. These low value transactions, however, utilise significant system capacity and resources, at times leading to customer inconvenience due to transaction failures because of issues related to connectivity.”

Mobile Banking Launched In 2012

It is worth noting that the National Payments Corporation of India launched USSD a mobile baking service called *99#. For the uninitiated, the services were launched by BSNL and MTNL. In 2016, the Indian Government introduced BHIM, which actually increased digital transactions in India.

In fact, some report claims that 2017-18 USSD 2.0 transactions managed to get 4.3 percent of the UPI volumes and 1.6 percent of the entire value. However, last year was not good the share has been decreased to 0.005 percent respectively.

After removing Disney+ Hotstar packs, Reliance Jio has again come up with new packs to offer the same app benefit. The company has launched three new packs that are priced at Rs. 799, Rs. 1,099, and Rs. 3,119. Besides, the company is providing Rs. 601 plan to offer Disney+ Hotstar access.

Reliance Jio Plans With Disney+ Hotstar Access

It is worth noting that the company offers four plans to its customers in the same segment. The first plan will cost you Rs. 601, where users will get 90GB of data, unlimited calling, and 100 messages per day for 28 days. In addition, the pack ships Disney+ Hotstar app access for one year and access to all Jio apps like JioTV, JioCinema, JioSecurity, and JioCloud.

The other pack of Rs. 799 ships 2GB of data for 56 days, which users will get 112GB of total data. This pack also ships unlimited calling and 100 messages per day for the same period. This pack also ships access to Jio apps, including JioCloud, JioCinema, JioSecurity, and JioTV. In addition, users will get access to Disney+ Hotstar app for one year.

Reliance Jio Plans With Disney+ Hotstar App Above Rs. 1000

The third plan of Reliance Jio is priced at Rs. 1,066 offers 100 messages per day, unlimited calling, and 173GB of data for 84 days. In addition, this pack ships JioCloud, JioTV, JioCinema, and JioSecurity. Also, this plan offers the Disney+ Hotstar app for one year.

The Rs. 3,119 offers 2GB of data per day for 365 days. It includes 740GB of data in total, 100 messages per day, and unlimited calling. This pack ships all Jio apps like JioTV, JioCinema, JioCloud, and JioSecurity. It includes Disney+ Hotstar app access.

Airtel And Vodafone-Idea Disney+ Hotstar Plans

It is important to note that Airtel and Vodafone-Idea also offer Disney+ Hotstar app access with prepaid plans. Coming to the Airtel plans that offer Disney+ Hotstar, the new plans are priced at Rs. 599, Rs. 838, and Rs. 3,359. On the other hand, Vodafone-Idea Disney+ Hotstar packs will cost you Rs. 501, Rs. 701, Rs. 901, and Rs. 3,099.

Amazon Prime is all set to increase the price of its packs from December. The company has also confirmed this update through its support page and the changes will be made monthly, quarterly, and yearly packs. Notably, all packs will be costlier from December 13.

However, the company said that existing users can continue the services until their existing pack lasts. “Existing Prime members can continue their membership for the duration their membership plan is at the current price. However, after the price change, you can choose to renew your membership at the new price,” Amazon Prime on its website notes.

Amazon Prime New Plans: Details

Notably, the company is providing three packs that are priced at Rs. 179, Rs. 459, and Rs. 1,499. Earlier, these packs were priced at Rs. 129, Rs. 329, and Rs. 999. This clearly shows that the annual pack will become Rs. 500 costlier, while monthly pack will be expensive by Rs. 50 and quarterly will be costlier than Rs. 130.

The company said that “Since the launch five years ago in IN, Prime has continued to increase the value it offers members. Prime provides an unparalleled combination of shopping, savings, and entertainment benefits to make life more convenient and entertaining every single day, and we continue to invest in making Prime even more valuable for customers.”

On the other hand, the company has decreased the price of Youth membership plans. The plans will be available between 18 and 24 years and a quarterly pack will be priced at Rs. 64 instead of Rs. 89 and Rs. 164 instead of Rs. 299 respectively.

Amazon Prime Offers

Apart from providing content benefits, the users will get 70M free songs on Amazon Music, 5 percent reward points on shopping with ICICI Bank Credit cards, Amazon Pay. In addition, users will get early access to mega sales.

Here’s How To Get Amazon Prime Access For Free

In case you are looking for Amazon Prime access for free, then you should look for telecom operators’ prepaid packs, such as Airtel and Reliance Jio. In fact, JioFiber and Airtel Xstream internet packs also offer Amazon Prime access with their packs.

In order to increase its user base, LinkedIn a professional social networking platform has announced support for regional language Hindi. With this launch, the company will support 25 languages globally. Notably, LinkedIn Hindi users can access their profile, feed, and messages in Hindi.

“With the launch of Hindi, now more members and customers can unlock greater value from the platform through content, jobs, and networking, and express themselves in a language that they feel comfortable in,” Ashutosh Gupta, India Country Manager, LinkedIn.

Besides, the company said that it will increase the range of job opportunities for Hindi-speaking professionals across all industries like government and banking. Additionally, the company announced that it will continue to add Hindi publishers and creators in the coming week ,which can increase engagement and conversations in the same language.

Moreover, new members are also allowed to use the app in Hindi. In fact, members who are using the app in English are also allowed to use the Hindi language. However, to access or change LinkedIn in Hindi, you have to follow these steps.

Steps To Access LinkedIn In Hindi On iOS And Android Smartphones

Step 1: First, you need to go to the phone settings and tap the language option.

Step 2: Now, tap on the Hindi option to change the language. Once it is done, you can use the application in Hindi.

To use the app on the desktop, you have to click on the Me icon and tap on the select and privacy.

Step 1: Log in to the LinkedIn account via desktop, then you have to click on the Me icon.

Step 2: Now, tap on the settings and privacy and click on the language option. Then, you have to tap on the language as Hindi.

LinkedIn Growth In India

The company said that India is the second market for them after the US. India has 82 million members. “We have witnessed high engagement and member growth in the last year, and it is at this exciting inflection point that we are strengthening our vision to create economic opportunity for ‘every’ member of the workforce, and taking down language barriers for Hindi speakers across the world,” said Gupta.

WhatsApp has retained the top spot when it comes to instant messaging applications for smartphones. Available for both Android and iOS devices, the Facebook-owned messaging service has received several new features in the last few years for an improved user experience. The company is still proactively bringing a new set of features and has several in the testing phase. One of such upcoming features which we will likely see in the future is a new voice waveform design in the app’s chat bubble.

WhatsApp Waveform Design: What Is It And When It IS Being Released?

A new report via WABetainfo, WhatsApp is ready to add the voice waveform design to the app’s chat bubble. This is a new design that one will be able to use for all kinds of audio or voice messages. Once this new feature is available for all Android and iOS devices (stable version), users will be able to see a new waveform design for the voice messages. This would be different than the current audio playback design which this app offers.

The report also clears the fact that the upcoming waveform in the chat bubble would only work if both sender and recipient have enabled this new feature on their respective handset. If in case, the sender doesn’t activate this option, the user receiving the voice note wouldn’t see the latest waveform design.

The company is expected to start releasing the beta version of this update from today. The report suggests some select WhatsApp beta users on Android and iOS devices will be initially getting this newly redesigned waveform for audio/ voice messages. However, the company will soon release the stable version of this update for both Android and iOS users. How soon that happens is yet to be confirmed. We can expect the company to complete the mass rollout in a phased manner.

Other New WhatsApp Features

WhatsApp has released multiple new features this year for the audience. The brand earlier got all the certifications and permissions from the National Payments Corporations of India (NPCI). This has allowed the platform to let users open a Demat account and invest in IPO.

Apart from this, WhatsApp has also been testing the option to Undo an uploaded status. This feature is also under the testing phase. The beta version for this update was spotted for iOS last week. The company is also said to be bringing an entirely new design language for the chat bubbles and also the react option for messages.