Reliance Jio, the hottest keyword of mobile users in 2016: UC News

Reliance Jio, Hindi content, Salman Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and online videos have been the hottest content trends of 2016, according to a latest report analyzing key content preferences of Indian consumers on the mobile released by UC News, a content and news distribution platform that is part of Alibaba Mobile Business Group.

Commenting on the recent findings, Jack Huang, President, Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business Group said, “Content consumption across the globe is increasingly happening in digital formats. Mobile digital consumption has gained major traction over desktop, aiding popularity of different content formats. Not just that, multiple new-age digital media platforms are challenging the traditional mediums. With greater mobile penetration and increasing internet access speed, we expect the Indian market to evolve fast and emulate China when it comes to paradigm shifts in digital content consumption.”

• Total Online Time Spent on Content Surges; Content in Hindi read 4.9 times more than English; Entertainment Most Popular Content

Total time spent consuming content on the mobile has seen a sharp uptick of 230% in Q4 versus Q3. The total page views on UC News also rose over 290% with content in Hindi seeing maximum traction. Indian users read in Hindi almost five times more than English on the mobile in 2016.

For Indians reading in English, entertainment content followed by technology and then sports are the most popular categories online. Most popular Hindi-language content is from the Entertainment category, followed by Society and Politics. As much as 73% of online content consumers are tagged under the Entertainment Category with 58% prefer to read social and civil news. 37% of the online content users like to read up on sports, especially cricket.

Sharing more insights, Kenny Ye, GM, Overseas Business, Alibaba Mobile Business Group said, “With a fast growing mobile internet population, Hindi content consumption in India has taken off in a big way in 2016. Hindi content focused on Bollywood news and celebrities clocked in highest page views and readership on the mobile. It was consumed over two times more than politics and technology content and content with Hindi keywords hit over 8 times more readership than content with English keywords.”

• Video-integrated Content Draws Maximum Engagement; Reliance Jio Hottest Keyword

Photo and video-related content draws higher engagement and significantly outperforms content without any images. Video content on mobile has seen a sharp surge of 30% whereas content with a photograph or pictorial depiction has worked 1.7 times better than its counterpart.

Reliance Jio is the Hottest Keyword of 2016 with 116 million page views in both Hindi and English content, owing to the group’s launch of multiple free calls and data services in a scenario where telecom companies are struggling to provide faster and deeper connectivity.

• U.P, Maharashtra most news-obsessed States

Uttar Pradesh registered highest number of news readers, followed by Maharashtra and Delhi.

Rajasthan, Kerala, Gujarat and Bihar are tied up at the fourth place. Increased internet reach and lower prices are pushing users in tier 2 and 3 towns to upgrade from feature phones to smartphones. Many a first-time mobile users are now coming straight on the smartphone, making it a single most important device to meet all their internet, entertainment, content and shopping needs.

• Content from ‘We-Media Program’ to see a major spurt

Now, more than ever, there is increased readership of content from self-publishers and key opinion leaders. With growth in consumption of Information Feeds, non-conventional News Feeds – including blog posts, independent write ups, imagery feeds, videologs, short video content, and more have become a huge hit. UCWeb has been setting new trends under UC We-Media program where people get an opportunity to create, to write, share thoughts and engage with their followers on UC News. Their content can also reach the target readers with help of Big Data technology and smart content distribution system. By analyzing the data of readership on We-Media, UCWeb foresees a huge spurt of self-publishers and online content creators in India with a yawning demand-supply gap.

Men continue to be the dominant user group of UC News by almost 6 times versus women. Over 87% of UC News users are below-30 age bracket with almost 75% users below 25 years of age.