YouTube unveils India mobile app for spotty Internet signals
Apple revamps Mac Pro
SAN FRANCISCO, April 5, (RTRS): Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Tuesday it would roll out a mobile YouTube application designed for India, boosting the search company’s presence in a burgeoning market with spotty Internet access.
Since the fall, Google has been conducting extensive tests in India of YouTube Go, which allows users to save videos to watch offline and monitor their data use.
A beta version of the app has been released in the Google Play Store in India, and will be released in other emerging markets later, company executives said in an interview.
Analysts have been forecasting a surge in video consumption in India since Reliance Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, upended the industry last year with cheap data plans that have prodded rivals to lower prices.
Silicon Valley has long regarded India, with its population of 1.3 billion people and poor connectivity, as a prime place to test products for emerging markets.
YouTube executives said they sought to build a product for Indian users from the ground up rather than releasing a slimmeddown version of their primary app.
“As we talked to people in the market, they didn’t want something that felt like a stripped down version of YouTube — they wanted the full experience,” said John Harding, vice president of engineering at YouTube.
Due to the frustration of trying to load video at slow Internet speeds, the YouTube team had contemplated showing users a series of images from a video with the audio, like a slideshow. But Indian consumers reacted poorly to the feature.
The final design helps users discover videos that trending in their region while minimizing data usage. Users can preview videos before watching to ensure that is what they want.
While Reliance Jio’s entry has boosted video consumption in India, analyst Neil Shah of Counterpoint Technology Market Research questioned whether YouTube Go would remain popular as cheap data plans become more prevalent.
“The only future I see for YouTube Go is for feature phones or basic phones,” he wrote in an email.
But with 180 million mobile users in India and mobile watch time climbing 400 percent year over year, YouTube has strong momentum in India, Jay Akkad, a product lead at YouTube, said.
Apple refreshed its Mac Pro line of desktop computers Tuesday, and the company revealed that it is working on a new line of iMacs to be released later this year, as well as a completely revamped Mac Pro for 2018.
The new Mac Pro models stick to the same design while adding slightly more powerful innards: The “entry-level” Mac Pro now comes with a 6-core processor, dual D500 GPUs and 16GB of RAM, and is selling for $2999. The $3999 model is getting an 8-core processor, dual D700 GPUs, 16GB of RAM. Both come with 256 GB of Flash storage, with an option to add more if desired.
Later this year, Apple is going to introduce a new version of the iMac that will be designed with professional users in mind. Executives didn’t reveal what exactly this will entail during a meeting with reporters, but BuzzFeed reported Tuesday that Apple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller said the new iMac won’t have a touch-screen.
Music streaming service Spotify said on Tuesday it had signed a deal with Universal Music Group that lets artists release new albums exclusively on its paying premium service for two weeks.
Spotify, a rival to Apple Music, has yet to report a profit as it expands, but is under pressure from some artists who have boycotted the usually free service and needs to show investors it can generate cash as it considers a US listing.
The multi-year licence agreement with Universal Music could make Spotify more attractive to Universal Music’s artists, who include Taylor Swift, Adele, Lady Gaga, Coldplay and Kanye West.
“We know that not every album by every artist should be released the same way, and we’ve worked hard with UMG to develop a new, flexible release policy,” Spotify Chairman and Chief Exeuctive Officer Daniel Ek said in a statement.
“Universal artists can choose to release new albums on premium only for two weeks, offering subscribers an earlier chance to explore the complete creative work, while the singles are available across Spotify for all our listeners to enjoy,” he said.