Google at the Android One event held earlier this year had announced YouTube Offline support for Indian users, wherein they can view videos even without an internet connection. The ‘offline’ feature is now LIVE in India, stated YouTube at an event in Mumbai today. With this move, users shall be able to download videos in the YouTube app when online or connected to a WiFi source, and save it to see later without a data connection. The unlimited viewing of the video shall be enabled for a period of 48 hours, after which user shall have to re-download the video in order to view it ‘offline’. The main purpose to initiate this feature is to reduce a user’s data charges while streaming YouTube videos on their data packet, and all the user needs to do in order to download the video is click on the offline button below the video frame. Not all features could be available offline though. Only the videos which enable this feature shall be made available for offline viewing.
As per John Harding, YouTube’s Vice President of Engineering, around 40 percent of the Indian viewers visit YouTube via mobile handsets on their data connection. Content providers like Yashraj Films, T-Series, Saregama have enabled their videos for offline viewing. YouTube houses about 10000 movies, 20000 TV shows and over 250000 Indian songs, and as per the data collected, Indians stream over 5 billion YouTube videos on a monthly basis. The number is expected to grow, and India is all poised to be the second largest market for video content come 2015. A YouTube spokesperson added that this service shall be additive, and it shall only grow the number of video watchers, and in no way the revenues of such content creators shall be impacted. On revenue from partnerships, Google India ranks 5th on the global chart and is expected to crack into the top three soon.
Google at the Android One event held earlier this year had announced YouTube Offline support for Indian users, wherein they can view videos even without an internet connection. The ‘offline’ feature is now LIVE in India, stated YouTube at an event in Mumbai today. With this move, users shall be able to download videos in the YouTube app when online or connected to a WiFi source, and save it to see later without a data connection. The unlimited viewing of the video shall be enabled for a period of 48 hours, after which user shall have to re-download the video in order to view it ‘offline’. The main purpose to initiate this feature is to reduce a user’s data charges while streaming YouTube videos on their data packet, and all the user needs to do in order to download the video is click on the offline button below the video frame. Not all features could be available offline though. Only the videos which enable this feature shall be made available for offline viewing.
As per John Harding, YouTube’s Vice President of Engineering, around 40 percent of the Indian viewers visit YouTube via mobile handsets on their data connection. Content providers like Yashraj Films, T-Series, Saregama have enabled their videos for offline viewing. YouTube houses about 10000 movies, 20000 TV shows and over 250000 Indian songs, and as per the data collected, Indians stream over 5 billion YouTube videos on a monthly basis. The number is expected to grow, and India is all poised to be the second largest market for video content come 2015. A YouTube spokesperson added that this service shall be additive, and it shall only grow the number of video watchers, and in no way the revenues of such content creators shall be impacted. On revenue from partnerships, Google India ranks 5th on the global chart and is expected to crack into the top three soon.