Three years into the Indian market and after announcing ‘grow in India’ initiative some time back, UCWeb took to the GMIC (Global Mobile Internet Conference), Bangalore to unveil the ‘UC Open Platform’.
So what is UC Open Platform?
UCWeb, an Alibaba Group company, is bringing the UC browser 9Apps and 9Game distribution platforms and the UC Union mobile traffic network under one pillar. What is it aimed at? The open platform will help various third-party players like the mobile developers, content providers, publishers, advertisers to take advantage of the collective data and various services UCWeb offers. Talking about the new platform, Kenny Ye, Managing director of UCWeb India said ‘Unveiling the platform marks an important milestone in our goal of facilitating a mobile internet ecosystem that is designed to benefit every participants’ The new platform is expected to be a good analytical tool as well as monetization program for developers, publishers and advertisers as they can now access actionable user metric analysis as well as engage with users via brand promotion and work on user/traffic acquisition and also indulge in brand promotion. While the app ecosystem is seeing a positive growth in India, it is till a long way to go for the Indian developers to make routine appearances in the top cream of apps in various platforms. In this context, the UC Open platform by offering insights on user engagement and behavior metrics and brand promotion opportunities provides a good leverage for the developers and publishers.Some key info from UCWeb
- India is now the third largest smartphone market behind only China and the US.
- India has the highest growing mobile market in Asia Pacific region with 186% year-on-year smartphone shipment growth
- India accounts for ONLY 5% of global app downloads
- Lack of domestic market contents
- Lack of integrated metrics and promotional leverage for Indian publishers
- The number of daily page-views on UC browser has increased 91.7%
- E-commerce site traffic on UC browser grew 30% per month in the first half of 2014
- 9Apps and 9Game distribution expected to open their Mumbai office shortly.