Election apps find flavour in poll season

Tamil Nadu Election Candidates, TN 2016, Deepika Election Live, Thanjavur Election are some of the apps keeping people hooked to their handsets

The recent elections have seen mobile apps, especially related to Tamil Nadu and Kerala, playing a significant role.

A series of election-related apps were rolled out in the Indian market over the last two weeks.

An analysis of the top 500 new free apps shows that these election-related apps have given a tough competition to bestseller games like Angry Birds Action, Lion Kingdom, Pool Party for Girls, China Town Police Car and Candy Jam.

Tamil Nadu Election Candidates, TN 2016, Deepika Election Live, Thanjavur Election, TN Elections, eVoter and e-sammathi are some of the apps keeping people hooked to their handsets during the poll season. The number of downloads has crossed 10,000 in many cases over a couple of weeks.

While election apps have been the flavour of the season, a few Indian businesses too are finding a prominent place on the new app list. Reliance Jio, the telecom brand of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, tops the number of new apps among Indian businesses. JioJoin, JioSecurity, JioMags, JioDrive, JioExpressNews, JioOnDemand, JioPlay and  MyJio are some of these, with downloads ranging from 10,000 to 100,000.

Communication app JioJoin and its live TV channel, JioPlay, have clocked 50,000 downloads in a few weeks. Google's small group sharing app Spaces as well as India vs Pakistan game have recorded similar numbers of downloads at 50,000.   

In terms of numbers, apps around Ramdev-backed Patanjali are next to RIL's in the list of the new 500 apps. The others include Shop Ramdev, Ramdev Patanjali, Ramdev Baba ke Gharelu Upay etc.

Among the other Indian presence in the new apps are Tata Power mobile app, which allows a user to look at past consumption, make bill payment, and see past records of bills.

Besides, there's Canmoney (Canara Bank Securities), Adhar Card Print, Himalaya Store (The Himalaya Drug Company), Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission, IPL Live, India vs Pakistan game of rivalry and Gujarat Lions T20 cricket game among others.

Whatsapp, Facebook, Google and Messenger are top the app list with 1 billion downloads each. The free app list also includes Truecaller, Flipkart, Amazon.in, Ola, Paytm, Snapdeal, Makemytrip, Yatra and Cleartrip among others.