Youtube has decided to take the slow internet connections of developing countries like India and Indonesia into consideration by introducing an offline feature in their mobile app. This new feature allows users to take video offline using either thier data plan or Wi Fi. Once taken offline, the videos can be viewed without an Internet connection for up to 48 hours after which the user must connect to the Internet to sync the usage data and analytics with YouTube giving the advertisers and the content owners the data they need.
John Harding, Vice President of Engineering at YouTube, said, "In a country like India, the future of the Internet is mobile. 85% of the internet population will connect to the Internet with a mobile phone before any other device. Already, we're seeing over 40% of our traffic in India come from mobile devices, and we want to make sure we are making YouTube as enjoyable as possible for these mobile-first users. By launching this offline experience on YouTube in India today, we hope to help people move past the challenges of data connection, speed and cost to enjoy a smooth, buffer-free version of YouTube."
Starting today, much of India's popular YouTube content is ready for people to view offline from indie comedy to Hindi movies and select Bollywood and pop Bhangra music.
"We are delighted to launch this new offline experience on YouTube with some of India's household names for entertainment and music, including T-Series, Saregama and Yashraj Films. Making these popular videos available for temporary offline viewing will help fans connect more easily with their favorite content, and we hope to continue helping Indians affordably access YouTube over the next year. This new feature will also help our partners bring more viewers to their content and find even greater success on our platform," said Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director of YouTube Partnerships, YouTube Asia-Pacific.
Today's launch of YouTube's offline feature is YouTube's latest effort in series of initiatives to make video content more affordable and accessible to the large base of mobile Internet users in this country. Earlier this year, YouTube worked with Tata DoCoMo to introduce "YouTube Recharge," a new video data add-on for prepaid users that gave them more affordable access to YouTube on their mobiles devices.
According to Mr. Vikram Mehra, Managing Director, SAREGAMA India Ltd.,"As a partner of YouTube we welcome this new feature which will allow people from small towns who are surfing from poor bandwidth to enjoy our vast repertoire."
According to Mr. Jai Maroo, Director, Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd., "We are one of the oldest partners of YouTube India and have a very successful partnership putting the best of bollywood content and monetizing it, where today we do between 46 to 60 million views per month. Given the access and pricing issues to date in this country, we do see that user behavior that somewhere consumption gets restricted and this offline initiative will help increase consumption.
YouTube has created a win win situation where this feature is easy and seamless for the user while still protecting the interest of the content owner and the advertiser."
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