https://www.phonearena.com/news/8-best-cheap-phones-under-15...
I'm suspicious that the numbers also include non-smart phones, just because of the 430M size, use of the word "mobile", and discussion of a browser from 2004 that predates the iPhone. Further, to the extent that compression is important, I'm suspicious their proxy-compression is a bigger deal for people looking to save money on data (and governments looking to monitor them).
What Google needs to look out for is UC becoming a default App since Alibaba and Alipay are already huge in China, and they could pay for it. Most people don't care about what browser is pre-installed on their phone, if it just works. Of course an Indonesian or Indian company could do this just as well as Alibaba.
I can believe 430M, compared to a few years ago it seems every other person in a developing country now has one.
>giving owner Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. an advantage in the race among technology giants to capture the next generation of internet users
...seems suspect. Most western Chrome users started off with Netscape, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc., and then switched when they got better machines and got tech-savvier and realized it was a better browser.
So just because a browser reaches a user first does not, I think, mean it has "capture"d that "generation".
That said, I don’t trust the security of this browser so I don’t think it’s a good thing people are using it.
Given that bundling Chrome is a requirement if you want to ship a mobile phone with the Play Store, this is a moot point
Let's face it, Chrome is designed by and for people living in the west, where people have smartphones with lots of storage and typically buy monthly plans with unlimited (or large allowance of) data.