Instagram Lite to expand to 170 countries and regions after India

On December 9 last year , Facebook launched Instagram Lite, the second-generation streamlined version of Instagram, in India, and plans to gradually promote it to the global market in the future; just three months later, on March 10, Facebook announced that Instagram Lite will be expanded to the Android system in 170 countries and regions around the world, including the United States.

The Instagram Lite app was launched in markets such as Mexico, Kenya, and the Philippines as early as May 2020 , but Facebook later temporarily shut down the project for unknown reasons. As people's need for social connections increased during the epidemic, Facebook redeveloped this more advanced and compact Instagram Lite version.

It is reported that Instagram Lite is less than 2MB in size, while the regular version of Instagram is 30MB in size. Instagram Lite contains almost all the key content, including stickers, GIFs and text, but does not support some more advanced tools such as AR filters, and users cannot make their own Reels through the application.

In addition, in terms of shopping functions, Instagram Lite product manager Nick Brown said that the team "has no plans" and there are currently no advertisements on the application. However, Brown also revealed in the interview that they will be "committed to providing users with a full set of monetization tools" and guaranteed that the lite version of the application will have the same user experience as Instagram.

Instagram Lite is a streamlined application developed mainly for mobile phone users with slow network speeds and small memory capacity, and can provide users with a "fast, reliable and responsive" social service experience.

As Facebook puts it: “More than 63% of the world’s population is online, and in North America that number is close to 90%. But many places that are connected have low mobile phone penetration and lack of affordable data plans…Only about 50% of households in India have access to the internet.”

This may explain why Facebook chose to launch Instagram Lite in India first.

In addition, as the Indian government has imposed a ban on a number of Chinese products including TikTok, Instagram Lite has also attracted a large number of TikTok users and its popularity has soared. According to data from mobile data analysis company APP Annie, the Facebook Lite application acquired about 40 million monthly active users in India in December.

In addition to Instagram, many other companies have also launched streamlined versions of their mobile applications, such as Facebook launched Facebook Lite in 2015 and TikTok launched TikTok Lite in 2019.

For companies looking to boost their growth through globalization, smaller, stripped-down versions of their apps are a great way to attract new users.

Instagram Lite