With YouTube losing its place on the iPhone home screen, users won’t miss a thing as YouTube has launched its own iPhone app at the App Store.
In expressing the new direction that YouTube will take with this new app, Andrey Doronichev, the head of YouTube mobile said, “It’s a new app built by YouTube engineers, to give our iPhone users the best mobile experience.”
With YouTube not showing up automatically on iPhones from here on, as they will have to convince users to download the app, it seems as if they’re at a disadvantage. However, this new app will have several features such as swiping, many more videos and a sophisticated search that wasn’t in the app that was controlled by Apple.
With the earlier app, which was introduced in 2007, not being updated since then, this new app is composed of new features that YouTube has been adding to its Android app and mobile website. Better still – the app will be able to display mobile ads unlike its earlier version.
Another challenge that YouTube will have to cope with, given the circumstances, is that it will need to continue to match up to the numbers of a billion views that it used to achieve in its former version as a native iPhone app – and which is what YouTube intends to do with an online and mobile marketing campaign in the works.
The new YouTube app works for the iPod Touch and iPhone but has not been formatted for the ‘big screen’, and which is why YouTube engineers are currently working on a separate app for the iPad.