Asian consumers are in love with the iPhone 6 Plus, according to a report published by AppLovin, a mobile ad network. AppLovin looked at data from the more than 25 ad requests it processes every day, and found that the global split between iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users is about 80/20 right now. But in some Asian countries, the 6 Plus is much more popular. AppLovin found that 35% of Chinese consumers were picking the 6 Plus instead of the 6, nearly twice the global rate of 20%. In Japan and Vietnam, adoption rates for the 6 Plus were even higher at 36%. The Philippines showed the most interest in Apple's new phablet with a 37% adoption rate. South Korea was the only Asian country with an adoption rate below 35% percent. App Lovin found that only 29% of consumers on Samsung's home turf preferred the iPhone 6 Plus. The giant iPhone's popularity in Asia is surprising given that Japanese consumers were opting for the iPhone 6 over the 6 Plus when both phones came out in September.

MUMBAI / NEW DELHI: Banking will have a new look with some of the jigsaw pieces slowly falling into place. Almost all dealings between a customer and her bank will be possible with a basic handset and without accessing the internet.

The telecom regulator will soon ask telcos — many of which have been resisting for years — to enable bank-authorized mobile payment companies to offer such service.

Telecom companies are expected to fall in line with local and international payment companies, including an associate company of Visa, lobbying with the regulator and the government for permitting them to tap the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) channel of telcos.

The USSD channel is a simple interactive text messaging system that can be used by a mobile phone subscriber to reach out to her bank for anything — transfer funds, check balance amount, pay bills, cancel a cheque, request for a cheque book, obtain an account statement, and even buy books and music using debt or credit cards. Customers - without 2G or 3G connectivity or a smartphone — have to simply key in something like *67# — or any other number a telco provides - to 'talk' to her bank.

At a meeting last week, executives of Movida —- a 50:50 mobile payments joint venture between Visa and the UK-headquartered mobile money specialist Monitise — sought the intervention of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for obtaining USSD code from telcos, a person familiar with the development told ET.

A month and a half ago, Movida had written to Trai asking for USSD access. This was soon after telcos, rather grudgingly, had agreed to share their infrastructure with the state-backed payments gateway, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which features prominently in Modi government's financial inclusion plan. Firms like Visa and MasterCard - though the latter has not yet approached the government - strongly feel that the state should ensure a level playing field to payment companies instead of providing USSD code to a single entity like NPCI.