The changing face of content consumption: Entertainment, sports top the chart

Entertainment, sports, news are the most-preferred categories for digital content consumers. Photo: AFP

NEW DELHI: India, the second largest internet market, ranks number 1 in app downloads and time spent on Android phones. Currently at 355 mn, smartphone penetration in India is expected to grow to 520 mn by 2020. Smartphones have now taken over as the preferred device for content and media consumption, ushering in a new era of digitization which is giving preference to relevant and ‘portable’ content at fingertips. Entertainment, sports, news are the most-preferred categories for digital content consumers. Trends shared by UC News (a news and content aggregation platform by Alibaba Mobile Business Group) in January highlight that 73 percent of online content consumers are tagged under the Entertainment Category with a high number consuming sports-related content, especially cricket. Cricket makes up for 68% of all sports-related content consumed on UC News. Focus on niche content is helping brands like Alibaba-owned UCWeb, HTC and BIGO Live scale new heights in India. UC Browser has achieved over 50% market share in India and is the sixth most downloaded application on Android platform with over 100 million Monthly Active Users. UC Cricket, a key component within UC Browser, is a comprehensive cricket content platform with live scores, match updates, match commentary, videos and more. Consumption of cricket-related content exceeded 750 million users on UC News and UC Browser - the UCWeb Platforms - for the recently-concluded ICC Champions Trophy and Indian Premier League (IPL). On a daily basis, over 3 million cricket fans checked into the UC Platform to consume cricket-related content, clocking in 7 million hours of cumulative content reading - a jump of 230% from last year from the Tier I, Tier II, rural regions & metro cities. The gaming industry is no doubt a front runner in augmented and virtual reality technologies with investors eager to participate with over billions of dollars. However, it isn’t the only industry which is benefiting from advancements in virtual reality. the practical implications of VR in entertainment, education and healthcare along with many others are virtually limitless. HTC Vive is one such platform which can prove to be an ultimate solution being the first complete VR system that has been made available to customers in the Indian market. With Vive, HTC delivers top-notch VR experiences like never before with room scale movement. HTC Vive brings access to wide library of apps and content across education, design, art, social, video, music, sports, health, fashion, travel, news, shopping, creativity tools and more. On other hand Mobile Broadcasting app like ‘BIGO LIVE’ provides a real-time interaction and video streaming to the users and allows users to live broadcast their talent and connect with their fans and other talented broadcasters as well as follow interesting broadcasters. BIGO allows users to watch live broadcasting anytime, anywhere and engage with the audience via live sessions. An increasing number of companies and app makers are finding ways to bring the best of content on users’ fingertips. This, coupled with decline in smartphone costs and increasingly accessible data, is set to provide a major boost to the Indian tech consumer.