The TV browser developed by TCL has over one million monthly active users in Brazil | Going Global New Land

Written by Hu Yiting

Edited by Yuan Silai

Introduction: The global business is in a state of turmoil and upheaval, and going global has become an unavoidable proposition for many Chinese companies. The 6.5 billion people in the world are scattered in nearly 200 countries and regions with extremely unbalanced development. The difficulty of entering this complex market may far exceed the entrepreneurs' predictions or imaginations.

Hardcore Technology has been paying long-term attention to the overseas market and going-global enterprises. Based on this, Hardcore Technology launches a new column: "Going Global New Land". We will cover developed countries and regions such as Europe, the United States, Japan, and Australia, as well as emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

The column will focus on companies and products, analyze the practical operation process of successful going-global companies from a professional perspective, and explore the causes and consequences of popular products in a country or region. Our higher expectation is to gain insight into and convey the glimmer of new trends.

The following is the ninth article in this column

In the evening, the intense competitions drive emotional fluctuations, accompanied by bursts of cheers. Watching live sports events in front of the TV has become a daily routine for people in Latin America and South America.

Despite cultural differences, users in South America are still enthusiastic about watching sports events or streaming media programs on TV, which is quite different from the situation in China where family TVs are often left unused.

Data from Conviva, a streaming media intelligence cloud company, shows that in the second quarter of 2022, the viewing time of streaming media in Latin America increased by 70%, and the demand for watching TV is on the rise.

When users are active, TV manufacturers from around the world have already made layouts in countries such as Mexico and Brazil. Among them, Samsung began to gradually expand the Latin American and South American markets in the 1980s and occupies the high-end market locally; TCL entered the local market in 2002 and started its sales layout. Data from Omdia shows that in 2023, TCL's TV sales ranked third in the Brazilian market.

In addition to the entry of the entire machine hardware, with the gradual popularization of smart TVs, the demand for TV browsers has also emerged. Samsung is an early player in the layout of TV browsers. 20 years ago, it developed its own operating system, Tizen, and embedded it in TV devices. Currently, TV manufacturers such as TCL, Sony, and Skyworth, as well as Google Chrome, have launched TV browser products for the Latin American region.

Among them, Thunderbird Technology, a subsidiary of TCL Industries, found at the end of 2021 that there is still a certain gap in the overseas TV browser market, and the user experience needs to be improved. In response, it launched its own browser product, BrowseHere, which has covered overseas markets such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe without market promotion investment. Its revenue in the first three quarters of this year increased by more than 8 times year-on-year. Up to now, the global download volume of BrowseHere has exceeded 14 million, and it has millions of monthly active users in countries such as Brazil, with more than 70% of them being non-TCL device users.

Simplifying Use and Adapting to Local Languages

In recent years, smart TVs have gradually become popular in emerging markets such as Latin America, and the demand for software services such as TV browsers has also gradually increased.

Data from AVC Revo consulting agency shows that in the first half of 2023, due to economic recovery in the Latin American region, the shipment of smart TVs reached 10.5 million units, with a year-on-year growth of 11.4%, performing significantly better than the markets in Europe, America, and the mainland of China.

With the increase in overall shipments, TCL has basically covered the entire Latin American region and many countries and regions in South America, and its TV market share in the core countries of South America ranks among the top five.

Li Hongwei, Vice President of TCL Industries and CEO of Thunderbird Technology, told Hardcore Technology that with the huge volume of TCL's entire machine, Thunderbird Technology was able to discover that the TV browser is still in a relatively early stage of development in the local area and has been verified and promoted.

Before 2021, not many TV manufacturers developed their own TV browsers. Only a few large multinational manufacturers such as Samsung and LG carried out this business to adapt to the use of smart TV products. Most browsers on the market still have a poor experience in terms of web page interaction and other aspects.

Chen Zhichao, Senior Product Manager of Thunderbird Technology, introduced that before BrowseHere entered Latin America, TV users generally used Google Chrome and purchased an additional mouse to connect to the TV for operation, which was more costly and more complicated to operate on the TV.

When verifying the market, BrowseHere also takes web page search as the primary function, allowing users to select film and television, live broadcasts, and other content from the entire network in smart TVs. In order to facilitate operation and reduce the cost of use, the BrowseHere R & D team has carried out functional optimizations for web page interaction and remote control adaptation for more than two and a half years, so that it no longer needs to rely on a mouse.

BrowseHere's web page search function, image courtesy of the enterprise

In addition, BrowseHere has also made localizations in search input and other aspects. Countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in Latin America and South America use Spanish and Portuguese. When searching for films, keyword input is also required, but due to language reasons, users need to input a larger number of words, which affects the user experience.

In response, BrowseHere spent more than half a year developing a localized automatic association function. It matches with global information media departments and local popular TV series, covering more film and television resources, so that users can search for corresponding content by inputting fewer words. At the same time, after the user browses a film on a certain website searched on the TV, BrowseHere can also display the link on the homepage for the user to find next time.

After multiple searches, BrowseHere will automatically aggregate the film and television resource pages based on the user's search history and sort them according to the source quality, with supporting similar content, search box recommendations, etc., to quickly meet their next viewing needs. Currently, the software can support voice input search and is compatible with more than 80 languages.

As a tool product, in the relatively early stage of the popularization of smart TV use in Latin America and South America, BrowseHere is still matching the usage habits of local users, and it is updated 3 times a week.

Active Latin American Users and Their Preference for Localized Content

Functional iterations benefit from continuous feedback. The BrowseHere team found that in a community of more than a thousand people, nearly half are users from Latin America and South America, and their discussions on product functions and content are quite lively.

Chen Zhichao told Hardcore Technology that when sports events are broadcast, local users are particularly active. They spontaneously share live broadcast links and websites for watching wonderful video highlights in the community.

Brazil, Argentina and other countries are called "countries growing on the grassland", and they hold national football leagues every year. Only the top leagues of these two countries add up to thousands of games. In addition, basketball and baseball are also quite popular in many countries in Latin America. When many events are held, watching in front of the TV has become a local habit.

Data from BrowseHere shows that from 4 pm to 7 pm is the peak period for Latin American users to watch live events, and their single viewing duration is about 50 minutes. Compared with watching the entire game, they are more inclined to only watch the first half or the second half. In response to this consumption habit, after the first half ends, BrowseHere will provide intelligent recommendations for other events in the same period for users to switch and watch.

In addition to sports events, local users are also keen on watching American blockbusters, talk shows and other TV programs. However, in terms of viewing habits, they tend to choose videos with local language subtitles and dubbing. Due to the long dubbing cycle, the online time of the films is forced to be extended.

Combined with user feedback, BrowseHere launched an automatic detection and matching subtitle translation function, and when the user opens a playable media resource on the web page, they can also obtain a native playback effect with a decoding rate of over 99%.

BrowseHere's blockbuster viewing function, image courtesy of the enterprise

While providing free web page search, film viewing, live broadcasts and other functions, BrowseHere also streamlines the application size. This is because the smart TV devices sold in some countries in Latin America and South America are still mainly low-end products in the price range of $200 - $500, with smaller memory and only 8G - 16G of running space, making it difficult to download large-memory software. BrowseHere reduces the application size to about one-tenth of that of competing products such as Chrome to cover more low-end device markets.

In addition to independent streamlining, Li Hongwei told Hardcore Technology that TCL's technical support in hardware also enables some functions of BrowseHere to be embedded in the entire machine, reducing the size of the app itself.

In fact, in addition to entering the market with TCL's entire machine, Latin American users also tend to download BrowseHere independently on forum websites. Being free and having a small memory are both characteristics that are quite attractive to them. Up to now, BrowseHere has become independent of TCL, and more than 70% of its users come from non-TCL devices such as Xiaomi and Hisense.

As the user volume of BrowseHere continues to grow, users from Latin America and South America are still the largest members in the community. Chen Zhichao said that based on local insights, BrowseHere will add a bookmark sharing function in the future to allow Latin American users to share book and music lists online to meet their sharing needs.

Even though the domestic smart TV market has entered a stock stage, in the distant South American continent, based on the needs of industrial iteration, there is still imagination space for the going-global of TV software applications.