MUMBAI: Disney UTV Digital, the digital media arm of Disney UTV, has launched four freemium apps UTV, Disney, Comedy and Devotional, for Indian mobile subscribers. Nokia Asha series has pre-embedded the UTV App on more than 2.5 million devices.
Content in the UTV app includes movie trailers, full length movies (Bollywood and Regional), Bollywood gossip and more. The Disney App includes short form content featuring Mickey and Friends, other Disney classics such as Big Bad Wolf and Santa‘s Workshop and celebrated Pixar short form animation such as Reds Dream and Adventures of Andre and Wally B.
The Comedy App gives users access to humorous videos like MENtals, Baba Aur Baby, Chickipedia and more. The Devotional App includes stories of Indian deities like Maa Durga, Sai Baba, Sri Krishna, and it includes the mythological epic Ramayana as well.
These apps, which feature the breadth and depth of Disney UTV‘s content across movies, television, Hollywood and English content along with aggregated content, have already crossed the 15 million download mark in their test phase itself. The apps provide a superior streaming experience for users, even on low-bandwidth GPRS networks.
The apps support monetisation via both ads as well as paid subscriptions enabled through Digital Disney UTV‘s mobile operator billing platform. This allows regular mobile users to access both ad-supported content as well as premium content within the same app, through a seamless one-click transaction via their mobile operator.
Disney UTV director, celebrity and video Sameer Pitalwalla said, "Feature phones are currently the dominant data consumption devices in India. While we have a robust smartphone strategy, we wanted to provide feature phone users with an excellent video experience. We combined our great catalogue with best in breed technology and have seen both download and engagement numbers catching fire. 15 million downloads, 1.5 million active users, terabytes in streaming and millions of ad impressions prove the power of our content and experience."
Nokia India director developer experience Gerard Rego said, "Engagement and innovation have emerged as one of the top deciding factors in the mobile phone industry with more and more youth accessing Apps that enhance their user experience. Our association with Disney UTV has been extremely successful and, together, we continue to add value to our consumers by offering superior on-the-go video streaming. The availability of Disney UTV Digital‘s new Freemium Apps is a great milestone as users can enjoy their favourite content through fast and seamless video streaming on their Nokia Asha devices."
