UC claims to accumulate 400 million users

Big orange "400 million", this logo has now become a unified microblogging avatar of UC executives and public relations.

This excitement spills over words. On December 13th, UC Youshi announced at AppFest in Hyderabad, India that as of the beginning of December 2012, UC Browser's global users had exceeded the 400 million mark and continued to lead the global mobile browser market.

Yu Yongfu, CEO of UC Youshi, stated at the meeting that UC Youshi can continue to lead the global mobile browser market and benefit from the rapid growth of UC users in China and overseas. He also proposed that the global audience of UC browsers will exceed 1 billion within five years.

“China and India contributed the largest part of the 400 million users.” Liu Lei, head of public relations at UC, told Investor News that in the domestic market, the number of monthly active users on the UC browser Android platform exceeded 100 million. turn off. At the same time, the Indian market is also growing at a rapid rate. She said that UC’s share in the Indian market has exceeded 25%, making it the largest regional market for UC overseas.

Although back in 2004, UC was involved in the browser market, which also made it accumulate a large portion of users. However, the competition in the mobile browser market is far from stable.

According to the data of "China's third-party mobile browser market monitoring report for the third quarter of 2012" released by Analysys International, as of the end of the third quarter, QQ browser, UC browser and Oppen browser (including Opera) accounted for 40.9% respectively. , 33.5% and 14.3% of the total share accounted for the top three positions in China's third-party mobile browser market. It is worth noting that QQ Browser was born in 2009.

"The biggest advantage of UC is to do it early. Early UC browsers are really fast, save traffic, and user experience is better, but in the era of smart machines, product experience has declined. At present, there is no advantage." Analysys International Analysis Liu Peng told reporters from Investor News.

Multinational force builds 400 million users

"In 400 million users, China accounts for about 150 million," Liu Peng said.

The accumulation of UC in China for several years is remarkable. In August 2004, UC Youshi applied the cloud architecture of server and client hybrid computing to the mobile browser field for the first time in the world, enabling many mobile phone users to access the Internet for the first time. In June 2011, UC Youvision released a new mobile browser kernel U3 that was independently developed. The new generation U3 core can compress page traffic by more than 60%. In June 2012, UC Browser officially became China Mobile’s exclusive custom browser.

Liu Lei told Investor News that in China, UC Browser has occupied more than 50% of the third-party browser market.

The Indian market is also growing rapidly as a new market. In November 2011, UC Youshi officially established its first overseas operating platform in New Delhi, India, and successively formed a market and product team. Liu Lei said that in the past year, the market share of UC Browser in India has steadily increased from 11% to more than 25% currently, and Yu Yongfu also proposed the market goal of “take India first in 2013”.

In addition to the Indian market, in September 2012, UC established a second overseas operating platform in the US Silicon Valley, officially entering the North American market.

"From the era of functional machines, UC began to make browsers. They have a large number of older users and older users. UC also makes mobile gaming platforms, so there are also some mobile platform users," said Liu Lei.

400 million users is a big number, but the future prospects of the mobile Internet are obviously more than 400 million. Gao Wei, Director of Public Relations, told Investor News that the mobile internet is becoming more and more vibrant. As the entrance to mobile internet, the market for mobile browsers will accelerate and the competition will be fiercer. We are very optimistic about the future of mobile browsers. development of.

UC loses first-mover advantage Baidu Tencent scrambles for market

In 2009, QQ Mobile Browser was launched. In June 2011, Baidu Mobile Browser officially went public. Although immature, they are not weak at all.

According to statistics from Analysys International, in the first quarter of 2012, the mobile QQ browser, UC browser, and Opera occupies the top three market share of active users of third-party mobile browsers in China, accounting for 40.2%, 38.3%, and 11.7%, respectively. In the second quarter, the market share of mobile QQ browser, UC browser and Opera Oppen was 40.3%%, 37.4% and 11.6%, respectively. QQ Browser maintained the top score, and its share increased while the UC share lost nearly 1%.

This situation will soon be broken and the entrants to the mobile Internet portal will continue to intervene. Public data indicates that the number of Baidu mobile browser users launched in just over one year has exceeded 30 million, and the market share has rapidly reached 5%.

UC's own strength is obviously inferior to Tencent and Baidu, and it faces the fierce pursuit of European friends and dolphins. Gao Wei said that in the short period of several months after its launch, Oppen was ranked among the top three domestic third-party browser markets. In the third quarter of this year, it occupied the third position with a 13.8% active user share, leading the fourth place. 12 percentage points.

Gao Wei also said that with the parent company Opera's technical advantages and the accumulation of channels, the European friends in the industry chain Samsung, Sony and other mobile phone manufacturers as well as Qualcomm, MediaTek and other chip makers have a good relationship.

Apart from the fierce rivals, the lack of UC's own content and products is even more worrying. "UC's biggest shortcoming is in terms of content, as well as the user experience of the product. UC has no advantage," said Liu Peng.

Mobile browser has been developed towards platform, one-stop login on the browser, one-stop service, including games, reading, music, etc. is the trend of future browsers. “The development of platform makes the content supporting its development and The service system is particularly important, as Tencent and Baidu have their own resources and have certain advantages over UC, Liu Peng said.

Gao Wei said that in the future, mobile browsers should develop in a more intelligent and pure direction, that is, provide users with targeted services and content guidance more in line with their personal needs, and best meet the basic needs of users on mobile devices. Browsing needs.

This also means that the speed of the competition has passed, fight service, fight the user experience is the future direction, and in the face of resourceful opponents such as Tencent and Baidu, UC's future is clearly not a good path to go.