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Business News/ Tech-news / News/  Pokémon Go craze slows down in India due to technical glitches: Nielsen
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Pokémon Go craze slows down in India due to technical glitches: Nielsen

Pokmon Go has not been officially launched in India, but is available through a downloadable Android application package file from websites, resulting in glitches

Pokémon Go registered highest reach (14%) in its second week, replacing the popular game Candy Crush and since then has been on a decline. Photo: ReutersPremium
Pokémon Go registered highest reach (14%) in its second week, replacing the popular game Candy Crush and since then has been on a decline.
Photo: Reuters

New Delhi: Location-based augmented reality game Pokémon Go, which took the world by storm, seems to be losing engagement and reach in India, almost after two months of its release, according to a study conducted by Nielsen mobile insights.

Pokémon Go, an offering from Alphabet-owned Niantic Inc., which requires the users to walk around and hunt virtual cartoon creatures was launched in the US, New Zealand and Australia in July followed by other countries.

The game has not been officially launched in India but is available through a downloadable APK (android application package) file from third-party websites.

According to the study titled ‘AR (Augmented Reality): Adding a new dimension to marketing’, Pokémon Go observed a 10% decline in its reach between 18 July and 28 August—from 14% in its second week to 4% in the seventh week.

Reach refers to the proportion of people who have used the application at least once in a given period of time (in this case, a week).

Pokémon Go registered highest reach (14%) in its second week, replacing the popular game Candy Crush and since then has been on a decline.

Explaining this downfall, the study stated that there are technical glitches in the unofficial versions of the game. “The reach has fallen since then (second week)—possibly due to new Pokémon Go updates which disable older versions of the game and all downloads in India being unofficial versions without an automatic update," the study said.

In terms of usage, Pokémon Go, however, still beats the video streaming application YouTube.

While YouTube is being used for eight days in a month, Pokémon Go’s usage accounts for 13 days, the study said. The game is still behind applications like Candy Crush, Facebook and messenger app Whatsapp, which topped the usage chart with 26 days a month.

Pokémon Go is being used the maximum between 7pm and 9pm, according to the study, “the usage of Pokémon Go app drops at night, mainly because of the nature of the game that requires users to seek Pokémons outdoors," it said.

According to Nielsen, the official launch of Pokémon Go will improve the reach of the game and also increase its usage.

“If the initial buzz around Pokémon Go is anything to go by, an official India launch of this game will see boost in reach and usage and may even challenge the domination of many leading apps," the study said, adding that this may also lead to more augmented-reality games.

The makers of the game have not yet announced the official release date for Indian market.

So far, Pokémon Go has been released in Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK and certain South-Asian countries on iOS and Android. The game registered over 100 million downloads in the first month of its launch.

Estimates suggest that the game has reached more than 40 million daily active users across the world and has advertisers and marketers latching on to this new trend.

On 7 September, a private individual moved Gujarat high court, saying that Pokémon Go is blasphemous and should be banned. In the game, the players are being offered virtual eggs in temples, which has offended the religious sensibilities of Hindus and Jains.

Earlier in August, the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and Japan’s Hiroshima memorial had also filed complaints against the game.

Pokémon Go was recently updated to remove these places as Pokémon landmarks.

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Published: 08 Sep 2016, 11:29 AM IST
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