YouTube Rolling out New HTML5 Mobile Site : Google rolled out the latest version of its mobile YouTube site on Tuesday, a browser-based application that is as fast as a client application for mobile devices, according to a product manager.
Mobile users in the UK, Europe and Middle East can now access an HTML5 version of Google’s YouTube video site, speeding up access for those accessing it via iPhones, Android or other mobile devices with browsers able to render HTML5 video content.
The new site, which is built on the HTML5 standard and accessed through the phone’s web browser, will offer an even better user experience than native mobile applications, claims Google. There are also enhanced social networking features to make it easier to share video links on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz. The Company also added that it has streamlined the mobile website to work better with the 3G network.
The launch comes as mobile use of the web is growing rapidly: Google says that YouTube’s mobile site, m.youtube.com, gets more than 100m video playbacks a day. Google says the decision has been driven by the dramatic growth in mobile access to YouTube, which is more than doubling every year.
YouTube product manager at Google, Andrey Doronichev, said: “We expect to see a lot of growth in the use of tablets for accessing YouTube Mobile so we have developed an optimised version for the iPad at present and hope to do so for other tablets on other platforms as they are developed.”
Google said the UK was the biggest European consumer of YouTube videos on mobile phones, followed by France, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland.
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