InMobi's Glance launches in Japan, aims for 40 percent of Android market

In India, Glance was present on 44 percent of smartphones in Q3 2022, according to Counterpoint research. More than 80 percent of the Glance active users belong to the sub-$250 price segment, and its active user base crossed 195 million in 2022, adding 32 million active users in the past year, with 20 percent year-on-year growth. Its users were mainly using phones from Xiaomi, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo and Realme.

“Smartphones have become an inevitable part of people’s lives, resulting in a higher pace of content absorption and more competition in content generation,” Arushi Chawla, research analyst at Counterpoint Technology Market Research, wrote in her analysis. “This is where Glance, with its lock screen service grabbed the opportunity to bridge the gap between content production and content consumption by making the process of content discovery possible at the very first touch by the users on their Android smartphones. Glance aims to reach smartphone users in the most seamless yet consumable form.”

More recently, Glance has been looking to experiment with device types, launching on smart TVs to capitalise on idle screens. Glance also operates Roposo, a live video and shopping platform, and Nostra, a gaming platform.

Globally, Glance is aiming to be on more than one billion phones in the next two years. The platform has over 230 million active users, primarily in India and Indonesia, while it has recently launched in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

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In its next phase, Glance is switching gears from emerging economies to focus on two tough and very different markets: First Japan, and later, the US.

“The lock screen has remained an underexplored avenue for consumer interaction, despite the growing daily smartphone usage. Content creators are actively seeking opportunities to capitalise on this trend,” Tarun Pathak, research director, Counterpoint Research, says. “With its prominent presence on Android devices, Glance has emerged as a leader in this space.”

“Having already established a significant foothold in markets like India and Southeast Asia, where personalised content through video stories and live streaming has been their forte, Glance's expansion into other Asian markets is a strategic move that could potentially redefine content delivery and user engagement,” Pathak adds.

Tokyo Drift

Glance works deeply with publishers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). In Japan, Glance is already available to subscribers of telco SoftBank Corp using Xiaomi (Redmi Note 9T Redmi Note 10T, and 12T Pro) and Motorola (Moto G53y 5G) smartphones. In the upcoming quarters, it aims to expand its presence to other big carriers and Android smartphone brands in Japan.

Initially, Glance consumers in Japan will be able to discover news, trending content, and gaming on their lock screens. Content and experiences on Glance are powered by Japanese publishers, including Yahoo Japan Corporation (Partners of Yahoo! News), LINE Digital Frontier Corporation, SoftBank Corporation (Baseball LIVE, Basket LIVE), and more.

Japan is different from the other markets Glance has tackled before, starting right from its user base.

“It’s a premium, high average revenue per user (ARPU) market, and we’ve seen a lot of positive user response in our research phases, which is why we are keen to be there,” Shah says. “So far, a lot of our focus has been on the youth, people buying their first or second smart phones. Interestingly, in Japan, we see an older target audience, and we were pleasantly surprised that they loved the product and how simple and visual it is.”

The average age for the Japanese target user is 48.7, versus in India and Indonesia, where the average user is at half that age. Glance has invested in setting up a local team, head by Masato Ito, who has previously worked for ByteDance and Shutterstock.

“Japan is currently an unhealthily iOS dominated market, at about 60 percent,” says Ito. “The iOS users are typically younger; in older Japanese users, we see more Android usage, with an even split of male and female consumers.”

Even so, content consumption habits are being seen as mostly universal: Breaking news, sports, food, lifestyle and entertainment are popular, with certain localisation, such as in Japan, manga is popular. Gaming, too, is entrenched in Japanese culture.

“While Japan incubated gaming, Indonesia is a massive gaming market as well. We’ve learned from Indonesia that people love playing games, but also love watching gamers live streams, and that’s working well in Japan too. We’re also seeing that telcos and OEMs are leveraging Glance as a differentiator, and it could help Android grow in the market,” Shah says.

The bar in Japan, Shah adds, is much higher, as consumers hold you to a different standard. “We’ve seen the quality of Japanese companies,” he says. “Customers are definitely less tolerant, so it was very important that we feel confident that we are offering a premium product. The other part is to be able to attract advertisers who will eventually help us monetise. We know going in that it’s a big bet.”

The team has been working on the expansion for the last year-and-a-half, getting publishers and partners on board. Glance now has a 20-member team dedicated to Japan.

“We know that this is going to be one of our top 3 markets globally, along with India, and eventually, the US,” Shah says. “We aspire to own almost 40 percent of the Android market share over the next couple of years.”

In the past decade, the first phase of innovation has come from the West, and the second phase from China, with apps like TikTok. Glance’s team is keen that India be a key character in the next phase of innovation.

“For our team, building the first unicorn was great, and being the first profitable one was even better. Having a second unicorn was phenomenal. But building a consumer tech platform out of India that can truly go global? That, we think, could be our legacy,” Shah says.