It’s fair to say that Flipkart’s move to go back to the web browser for the mobile has been a surprising twist in the story. The e-commerce company has been openly touting itself to go app-only in India but instead we’re looking at a mobile-optimised browser, Flipkart Lite, made with Google.
The Flipkart Lite browser is mainly aimed at Android users with Google Chrome, while iOS users have been given the cold shoulder. The company had earlier revealed that 70 per cent of its transactions are done via mobile, which highlighted their keenness to focus solely on a mobile platform.
Flipkart’s mobile app is still its primary vehicle for reaching customers on their phones. But some users in India are reluctant to download apps because they have limited storage on the phones and limited data plans. Having a strong mobile website means Flipkart won’t turn away those potential shoppers.Peeyush Ranjan, engineering head at Flipkart
Twist in the E-Tale
Flipkart is trying to get back on the consumer’s side and Google has its own reasons to build up a platform on the mobile that serves the web like before. With mobile apps, Google fails to register the user’s content and that gets crawled and indexed with the help of its search-engine feature.
Flipkart has joined hands with Google that makes sure the web browser experience on the mobile is at par with the app service. Google is known to be diplomatic with this point of view on net-neutrality and it will be interesting to see if their stance has changed or do they stay true to the cause. We tried our hands at the Flipkart Lite and thankfully it’s nothing like what we first saw with the Facebook Lite app earlier this year.
Can Flipkart benefit by going back to web browser again? We’ll just have to wait and see.
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