Google-backed unicorn Glance rolls out live feature for lockscreens

Google-backed unicorn Glance is aiming to be synonymous with live streaming with its newly launched feature – like Google for search, or Facebook for social media.

Piyush Shah, president and COO of Glance / Photo credit: Glance

The InMobi-owned firm has introduced Glance Live, which allows users to access live commerce, entertainment, sports, education, and health on the lockscreens of their phones. SoftBank-backed InMobi is eyeing a public listing on the Nasdaq at a valuation of over US$15 billion.

Glance’s product allows users to access live streaming on their lockscreens. For live features available on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, a user has to enter the respective apps.

“[The] lockscreen is the first screen you see in the morning, and the last screen you see at night, and over a hundred times a day, every day,” Piyush Shah, president and chief operating offer of Glance, told Tech in Asia. This means round-the-clock live content for users to discover on their lockscreens, according to the company.

Glance has already made available 20 to 25 daily live shows, each up to 20 minutes long, for viewing on lockscreens.

Users will likely spend 548 billion hours consuming livestreaming content on top social apps this year, according to an App Annie blogpost.

Glance is looking to acquire startups that will further accelerate its vision of “live internet” globally, Shah said. In June, the company acquired ecommerce platform Shop101 to enter the live commerce space.

Singapore-headquartered Glance is an AI-based software company that delivers personalized content to the lockscreens of smartphones. It comes pre-installed on phone brands such as Samsung, Xiaomi, and Oppo, which use the Android operating system. Having raised US$145 million from US-based Google and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, Glance turned into a unicorn in less than two years.

Glance has a user base of around 150 million globally, including 25 million in Southeast Asia. It aims to be on a billion devices globally in the next two to three years.

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Glance began operations in Southeast Asia in the first quarter of last year in countries including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, said Shah. The app is currently available in Thai and Bahasa languages and will soon add Malay and Vietnamese to its offerings, he said.