The Alive App, has seen close to 3.4 lakh downloads since its launched by Times of India on December 13, 2012. The Alive App is the world’s first augmented reality application that’s available on five major platforms — Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows and Symbian.
To access the augmented content, TOI readers need to download the Alive application on their mobiles. Focussing the phone’s camera on news reports, pictures or ads in the newspaper (that carry the Alive logo) automatically fetches up related videos or pictures.
According to latest reports, the freeware app was downloaded by as many as 3.4 lac users till January 28. Reports also revealed that Alive augmented visuals released in TOI over the last 30 days have received successful scans ranging from 2.2 lakh to 11.0 lakh per day with an average of approximately 4.6 lakh successful scans every day.
Reports found that users spend an average of 2.4 minutes per day viewing content on their mobile phones. Bollywood, Sports and National content are the three most popular categories that have emerged among Alive users.
The Alive App, developed in partnership with TimesMobile Ltd, uses the mobile device’s camera to recognize pre-loaded images from the newspaper and plays back augmented pictures or video connected with the particular image. According to reports, the app is a continuous chartbuster in the iOS app store, featuring among the top 100 in its free app category.
Alive App is available on select Android (version 2.2 and above), iOS (version 4.3 and above), BB (version 5.0 and above) and Symbian (version S60 and above) handsets.
