Users Behaviors on Mobile App in India and Indonesia from Mozilla Firefox Lite | Jeffrey Talks
Mozilla Taipei held a speech of “The Insights of Mobile Users in India Market”on May 31, 2019. The speech shares a lot of know-how about user behaviors in India, it is helpful for those companies heading for India and Indonesia markets.
In this speech, there are two main parts. First part is sharing the launching of Firefox Lite App in India and Indonesia. The other one is the launching of Meitu in India and Indonesia. This post summarizes the first part.
An Overview of India Smartphone Market
In May 2019, The current world population is 7.6 billion, the number of internet users is 4.1 billion. From 2018 to 2025, there is an estimated growth of internet users in India about 3.4 billion people. Here are two reasons below mentioning in the speech:
- In 2014, the smartphones decrease from 300 dollars to 100 dollars in India. Smartphones are getting cheaper. The yearly salary in second-tier city or third-tier city is 2,000 dollars. Smartphones are affordable for them.
- In 2018, cellular data is more cheaper and almost unlimited for users. The average data for one user is 1GB to 1.5GB per day.
India is one of the emerging and potential market for internet companies today.
The Launching of Firefox Lite App
Firefox Lite App is the lite version of Firebox browser. At first Firefox Lite App targets at the Android users in Indonesia, launching in November 2017. After one year, it launches India market. In India market, Firefox Lite App reaches a million users in three months, although it is simply 0.01% of India population.
Observing the Behavior of Indian Mobile Users
Ivonne Chen is the Sr. UX Researcher in Mozilla. She interviews 13 people in India observing how Indian users interact with mobile browsers. Here are some insights below:
Installing Many Mobile Browsers at the Same Time
Users must install at least two mobile browsers and putting them into an app folder. When they connect to Wi-Fi at home, they use Chrome and UC browser as main browser. Those browsers have many kinds of functionalities. When they go out, they use Firefox Lite which helps them get the text information quickly even they are in an unstable internet connection.
Users often take two browsers as major browsers and take one browser as minor browser. During the interview, a user especially mentioned that he users a specific browser watching Netflix because it is more smooth.
Using Different Browsers in Different Situations
Some of browsers can open many browser tabs at the same time and it’s convenient to keep the information you want to read. Some of browsers just have a single browser tab, you can immediate search and close it easily. The interface without many tabs may makes you feel succinct.
Some users will open a browser without many functions searching for some interesting things. When they want to find information like mobile specifications, they will use a browser with many browser tabs.
Access Prohibited Content by VPN
Because India government regulate the internet domestically, users sometimes can’t access foreign service or content. They have to use vpn(virtual private networks) or switch different browsers to access them. The most common vpn in India is Turbo VPN. Its basic function satisfies many users love to watching Korean dramas.
Care About the Privacy and Phone Storage
The problem of advertisement tracking has been annoyed Indian’ life. For example, if you search the “airline ticket” in the search engine, you’ll get a phone call for promoting airline ticket as soon as possible, it causes Indian take their privacy as serious.
Indian will ignore the unknown phone calls until they make sure the phone caller is a“real” man. They often check the identify by Whatsapp.
To avoid those kinds of phone harassment, users will use the private mode to avoid advertisement tracking. For users, there are some advantages for private mode:
- Interface is more succinct
- No advertisements
- High speed
- Saving phone storage and cellular data
Indian users take browsers as a tool of saving phone storage and cellular data, it is also an app and portal for shopping and browsing the news in the world. It’s also a way avoiding download many apps.
Sometimes users may use private mode to manage his passwords or creating many accounts buying limited offer.
What are the Key Features of Firefox Lite?
After understanding the users’ behaviors, what are the features of Firefox Lite better than other browsers?
Long Screenshot
It’s a disaster to screenshot many times to group a picture I want. Especially for Indian users, they love to screenshot anything.
Firefox Lite’s long screenshot can capture all mobile screen from top to end at one time. It is damn convenient!
High Speed
In India, the Youtube and Facebook have lite versions. The lite version brings a concept of “Liter is faster”. When users spend more and more time on mobile, they start to find better browser to use. Many users find Firefox Lite due to the reason.
Succinct UX and Practical Functions
Many users are satisfied with the user interface and design of Firebox Lite. It’s simple and pretty. You can see the most common-use services like Facebook and Instagram in the main screen. Clicking the “more” button in the bottom right corner, it will show you all of functions you may need.
The VPN and long screenshot is unexpected surprises for users.
Switch to Private Mode Easily
In comparison with other countries, it is relatively high percentage using private mode for India users. For Indonesia users, the screenshot is important. We can get those insights by analyzing the user datas.
Switching form private mode to normal mode in Firefox Lite is simple. Just click the button in the lower left corner.
The basic functions of Firefox Lite App in every country is the same, but Indian like to watch news and Indonesian like to go shopping. So the promoting content to users is kind of different.
Every desktop user in India mostly has Firefox desktop app, we are not sure what is the reason, but when users need a mobile browser, it doesn’t remind users to download Firefox Lite.
After interviewing 7 users, almost 2 to 3 users install Firefox desktop and mobile version at the same time, but no one uses Firefox and Firefox Lite at the same time on mobile.
Product Takeaways from Firefox Lite
- Users spend a lot of cleaning phone storage and memories. How to help them efficiently complete this task?
- Indian care about internet privacy. How to help them save their personal information? Even designing relate functions in app.
- Users spend much time on which browsers can show the prohibited content quickly. How could we help them?
