Facebook recently quietly launched a new app called Facebook Lite, targeted at selected countries in Asia. As its name suggests, it’s a lighter version of the company’s main app developed for low-end Android devices in emerging market.
Launched over the weekend, Facebook Lite is available in Bangaladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, and is believed to be reaching more countries in the future, if it’s successful.
Made for low-end android devices, the app is not only a lighter version that is only 252kb in size, but also consumes less data as it is designed for 2G networks and areas with limited network connectivity. While it may sound like a very simple app, Facebook Lite still comes with some native Android features like push notifications, camera integrations and such.
With phone manufacturers targeting emerging markets like how Google launched Android One initiative in India, it make sense for big companies like Facebook to have an app that is catered for these markets too. The app seems to be doing quite well with over 10,000 downloads and an average rating of 4.6 from 693 reviewers. Sadly, the app isn’t available for us Malaysian users because there are a lot of 2G areas in our country, and it’ll be great if they could hop onto the bandwagon as well. If you’d like to try it out, I’m pretty sure the APK file can easily be found.
(Source: TechCrunch)
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