U Mobile ropes in video content partners

Malaysian telco U Mobile is collaborating with YouTube and Tonton to offer U Mobile customers free data for non-stop video streaming of YouTube and Tonton content. The new introduction is in line with the company’s recently announced “Vision 2 Million campaign” where U Mobile’s pledges to grow its subscriber base with two million new customers by the end of the year.The company’s collaboration with YouTube and Tonton also depicts its attempt to reach out to its target audiences which are mainly youths and young executives. The offer looks to target youths in favor of late-night video streaming and young executives in transit on their way to work.“Mobile data is slowly becoming a need for today’s consumers, especially urbanites as smart devices play a vital role in connectivity, entertainment as well as our daily routine. Addressing the current consumer trend of streaming video content on mobile devices, we are proud to introduce this video streaming add-on, which is testament to U Mobile’s efforts in constantly catering towards consumers’ ever-changing lifestyles and needs through our innovative product offerings,” said Jasmine Lee, chief marketing officer of U Mobile.“With viewing habits becoming increasingly mobile, we want to make sure we can help people watch YouTube whenever and wherever they want it. By working with U Mobile to provide new ways of accessing videos on their service, we hope to help Malaysians get more out of YouTube at more affordable prices,” Matthew Zaheen, head of marketing, Google Malaysia added.Lam Swee Kim, group general manager of Media Prima Digital added that traffic has doubled on Tonton via mobile devices since January 2013 and it now accounts for up to 60% of overall daily traffic.  Recent studies have shown that the video streaming trend on mobile devices has doubled since 2013. Locally, 42% of Malaysian netizens today watch their video content via the Internet through video platforms such as YouTube and Tonton.