Alibaba’s widely popular news app ‘UC News’ has now crossed 100 million users milestone in India and Indonesia, the company said on Tuesday. UC News is a content platform operated by UC Web, a subsidiary of Alibaba’s Mobile business Group. Launched in June 2016, the app has been able to clasp a large readership in both Indian and Indonesian markets within a short span of time.
Announcing their latest achievement, the company said in a statement,
With 100 million daily article views, UC News has rapidly grown in India and Indonesia markets since its launch in June 2016.
Further, the company added that there has been an unprecedented rise in the average time spent on UC News. As for this quarter, an average user spends over 23 minutes on UC News. The popularity of a channel among the masses has been credited to the platform’s diverse digital content and in-depth coverage of India-focused reports.
Witnessing the growth of UC News in the country, the company now plans to invest about ₹120 crores in the market to further push the generated content. This investment will aim at the expansion of the platform within remote areas of the country with an adjacent increase in localized and versatile content by the end of 2017. It will also help the company strengthen its regional and digital content ecosystem.
Back in March, Alibaba announced the launch of an India-specific content platform — We-Media Reward Plan 2. The company will initially invest ₹5 crore, as part of its plan to invest around ₹200 crore over the next two years to drive content distribution in India. The 100 million active users further reiterate the reason for such a humongous investment. This plan provides monetary support to publishers, content writers, and independent bloggers in the country.
Since there has been an upsurge in the Internet mobile users with a corresponding downfall in desktop usage, the success of the app was inevitable. Also, thanks to the marketing and campaigns led by Alibaba, UC News is such a hit among the masses.
For the record, according to internet traffic monitoring firm StatCounter, the combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices tipped the balance at 51.2 percent vs. 48.7 percent for desktop access in November’16. The firm further claims that UC Browser holds the top position in the country having a market share of at 43.31% followed by Chrome and Opera at 36.07% and 8.34% respectively.
