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With the quality of broadband services improving in the country, Microsoft-owned professional networking platform LinkedIn is shutting down its Lite app. The app was launched in 2017 to enable accessibility to users in low-connectivity and low-bandwidth geographies such as India.
The app will get delisted from Android app stores on January 27 and will be deactivated for existing users on March 15. Over the next few weeks, the company will focus on helping existing members make a smooth transition to its full version app or mobile web experience, whichever best suits their needs.
Ajay Datta, Director of Product Management, LinkedIn, said in a blogpost: “When we launched LinkedIn Lite in 2017, our goal was to make the platform more accessible and help professionals in low-connectivity and low-bandwidth areas like India better connect to opportunity. Five years later, the world has digitised at an unprecedented pace, with huge improvements in Internet usage and mobile Internet speeds across the world.”
Mobile data consumption
Linkedin was among the many tech companies that launched a lighter version of their platform because countries like India had a huge population with basic 2G mobile services. But over the last 3-4 years, India’s broadband usage has grown exponentially, both in terms of speed and data consumption. India has the highest mobile data consumption rate at 12 Gigabytes or GB per user a month in the world, and the user base has grown to 700 million.
“We’ve seen a steady growth of our full version app in India — four times more than the global average — which provides members with enhanced features unavailable on LinkedIn Lite, such as the ability to customise their feed to dark mode and the full suite of messaging tools. We’ve also invested in our mobile web experience to make it more lightweight and bandwidth-sensitive, and added more features, including more messaging tools and the ability for members to customise their feed to dark mode,” he added.
LinkedIn said that in developing markets its the full version app and mobile web experience now better serve user needs. “This is why we’ve made the decision to remove LinkedIn Lite from Android app stores on January 27, and the Lite app will be deactivated on March 15. Over the next few weeks, we will focus on helping our members make a smooth transition to our full version app or mobile web experience, whichever best suits their needs,” said Datta.
Existing members will be able to log in to the full version app and mobile web experience with the same username and password. All their connections, messages, and profile details will automatically appear.
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