The Chinese invasion in India set to move beyond just smartphones. Alibaba’s UCWeb is eyeing the news aggregation space with its UC News. The platform is only available to users on Android in the country for now.
According to the company, UC News can be used either as a standalone app or within the UC Browser. The app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and offers an array of features, including UC Browser’s data compression.
The company is heavily reliant on its machine learning technology to customise the news as per the user’s preference.
With UC News, Alibaba’s mobile division wants to retain its 80 million monthly active users of UC browser in the country, and offer them an intuitive content-related solution.
The company has also stated that over 73 percent of their active viewers are hogging onto news content, hence their strategy might actually be spot on. However, the question is, do we really need another news app?
Do We Need Really Another News App?
So, say your phone already has a host of news apps. In addition, you have Google News available via Chrome and a host of other platforms to receive tailor-made news on your phone. Do users really need another news app which is just an aggregator?
With increasing smartphone penetration in India, the folks at UCWeb believe that the demand for on-the-go news services will continue to increase. And with UC News, they hope get a bit of the action.
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