Glance’s Active User Base Crosses 160 Million in India

Lockscreen content platform Glance recorded 163 million active users as of Q3 2021, according  to Counterpoint Research’s Quarterly Mobile Application Tracker. Glance’s active user base  experienced consistent growth since its inception. Its active user base, which now consists of 30% of  India’s smartphone users, grew by 8% QoQ in Q3 of 2021. 

Glance enables its users to access a wide range of content, including live interactive content, on  their smartphone lockscreens. This content is curated from the top publishers and developers in India  across categories such as sports, current affairs, fashion, travel, food, commerce, and entertainment. Commenting on the development, Research Analyst Arushi Chawla said, “The lockscreen is the most  visited real-estate on a smartphone. It is the first screen users see every time when unlocking their  smartphone. Being present on this surface, Glance makes content discovery frictionless and improves  the opt-in rate for interactive broadcasting, compared to any other in-app event features that require  users to login. Glance’s recent foray into LIVE, interactive content has also helped it to differentiate  itself as a platform and has helped boost its user engagement levels.” 

Chawla added “As per our estimates, about a billion smartphones will be sold in next five years in  India, which brings a huge opportunity for a content platform to expand using Hardware as a  Distribution (HaaD) model. Being a multi-lingual, pre-installed application in many leading smartphone  OEMs, it serves as a gateway to the latest content for many first-time smartphone users.” 

Exhibit: Glance Active User Base, Q1 to Q3 2021 

Source: Counterpoint Research Quarterly Mobile Application Tracker, Q3 2021 

Glance’s active presence is highly prominent in the $100- $250 price segment. Where about two-third  of the active users came from this price band. Upper-mid-and-affordable premium ($250 and above)  also consists of about 20% of the Glance active userbase.

Glance continues to strengthen engaging ways to create stickiness on the platform. With the launch  of Glance LIVE, and a rise in interactive, real-time content, Glance is progressively bringing newness in  content delivery. Content from Roposo’s top creators onto the Glance lockscreen platform has  increased the content uniqueness as well. 

India is a price-sensitive and highly competitive market for OEMs. In many cases, it directly affects  their operating margin and ability to maintain their market position. As the market dynamics are  moving from hardware-level competition to providing an overall holistic experience, most of the  OEM’s strategy will concentrate on maximizing the customer’s lifetime value. In such a scenario long 

term loyalty and value creation will depend on providing differentiating over-the-top services. Content  will certainly play a key role in developing brand stickiness. 

Commenting on this, Senior Research Analyst Pavel Naiya said, “Glance has created a unique  positioning by pioneering the use of lockscreen as an asset for content discovery and by launching live,  interactive content. With more OEMs looking to build deeper, more long-term content strategies for  users, the presence of a content platform like Glance on devices can add great value. Glance can also  be deeper integrated as a feature or can be added as an additional system update to optimize its  performance as the consumer preference evolves.” 

Over the past year, Glance has expanded its user base beyond India and is currently also available on  devices across Southeast Asia. 

Methodology 

Glance’s mobile application presence is calculated from our panel database of over a million  smartphone active users. Model-level Glance penetration data and active user ratio were extrapolated  to our monthly smartphone installed base data using various parameters such as brand, model, and  price band to predict Glance’s active user base. We expect the results to have a statistical precision of  +/- 5% at the confidence interval of 90%. 

This is a sponsored survey to better understand the brand’s presence in the Indian smartphone market. Background 

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