UC aims to be leading mobile browser in India

UC Mobile Ltd said it hopes to grab the top spot in India's mobile browser market by next year, according to the company's chief executive officer.

The company, which entered India in 2010, currently has around 20 million users in the country, accounting for a 25 percent market share, said UC Mobile CEO Yu Yongfu.

"UC's growth rate in India has accelerated over the past six months since we established an office there last November," Yu said at the 2012 Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing on Thursday.

According to research firm StatCounter, UC Mobile's market share in India has grown from 11 percent to more than 20 percent over the past six months, second only to Norway's Opera Software, which had a market share of 36 percent in the same period.

UC Mobile pledged to invest at least $5 million in India this year. Meanwhile, it expects its Indian user base to surpass 100 million by 2015, Yu said.

More than 500 local companies have established partnerships with UC Mobile, including media giant Network 18 and instant messaging provider RockeTalk.

Serving more than 300 million users worldwide, UC Mobile is the world's biggest mobile browser by user base, with about 40 million overseas users.

The company has a more than 10 percent market share in six foreign countries, including India, Indonesia and Russia.

In addition to emerging markets, UC Mobile is also planning to expand in the United States by providing customized products to customers in the first half of this year.

UC Mobile has raised about $100 million in funding since 2006.

The company will not seek additional investors before an initial public offering since "UC Mobile has enough cash in hand", said Yu. The management team has the majority stake in the company, he added.

On Thursday, UC Mobile signed a strategic partnership agreement with Evernote, a US application developer.

Under the agreement, the latest international version of UC browser will include Evernote Support, enabling users to share everything that they view through UC browser on to their Evernote account with just a click. This function will also be featured in the Chinese version soon.

"Our users love to clip webpages using Evernote's extensions for desktop browsers. On mobile devices, we look to leading browser developers, like UC Mobile, for this capability," Ken Gullicksen, Evernote's vice-president of corporate development, said at the same event.

During the conference, UC Mobile also announced its cooperation with UK-based telecom operator Vodafone to become its mobile browser partner in the India market.