How Jack Ma beat Sundar Pichai on his home turf

Browser wars are back! Surprisingly, Alibaba's Chrome alternative - UC Browser - dominates the Indian browser market, reports Tech in Asia

Alibaba’s Jack Ma was rejected from Harvard University ten times. Google’s Indian-born CEO Sundar Pichai is an alumnus of Stanford University and Wharton School. But when it comes to capturing the Indian market, the Chinese business magnate has a few more tricks up his sleeve than Google’s new helmsman, it seems.

According to a report released yesterday by mobile analytics firm Quettra, UC Browser’s share among mobile browsers is almost double that of Google Chrome in the Indian market. Across all mobile operating systems, Indians spend a collective 11.3 million hours a month on UC Browser and just 6.1 million hours on Chrome.
 

According to StatCounter, an independent web traffic analysis firm, UC Browser has a dominant 54.42% page view market share in India. The market share of UC Browser in Indonesia, where it is the leading mobile browser, is over 49%.
 

Still, Google’s Chrome dominates globally. The total market share of UC Browser internationally is just 17.42%. Chrome tops the list with close to 35%.
 

A spokesperson for UC Web said that UC Browser is the first mobile browser to incorporate cloud technology which can compress data and accelerate the loading speed.
 

“UC Browser’s cloud technology is well adapted [for] India, where network infrastructure is not perfect – especially in India’s suburbs,” the spokesperson says. “UC Browser not only saves data consumption and makes mobile internet more affordable for many people, but also significantly speeds up web page loading under various networks.”
 

Localisation is UC Browser’s biggest advantage. The other attractive proposition, for many users, for downloading the UC Browser app is the 'quick links' on the home page.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.