According to a recent study, US viewers are clocking in nearly an hour of viewing time on mobile devices per day in 2021, expected to grow by 12.2% by 2023. Worldwide, audiences are increasingly turning to mobile video as well. By 2023, there are expected to be nearly 3 billion mobile phone users watching video, over 37.1% of the world’s population.
With audiences spending more and more time on their phones, we’re excited to release the newest version of our Native Mobile SDKs for both iOS and Android, designed to deliver optimal viewing experiences in mobile apps.
JW Player’s Native Mobile SDKs
Built on top of a native operating system and video player, our native SDKs help customers create a much more powerful and consistent video player out-of-the-box for mobile devices. This mobile solution requires minimal code while also providing expert support, enabling customers to leverage JW Player’s industry-leading video streaming, engagement, and ad monetization functionality while simultaneously reducing developer workload.
What’s new in JW Player’s Native Mobile SDKs Version 4
Exciting enhancements included in the newest version of Native Mobile SDKs include a more immersive user interface, improved speed, and easy-to-implement integration tools for developers.
New, modern UI for fully immersive viewing in mobile apps
The UI refresh is optimized for highly immersive, long-form video experiences such as streaming a favorite TV show or tuning into a fitness workout session. This sleek new design offers viewers familiar player controls such as fast-forward and rewind buttons, with double-tap to fast forward coming soon.
Thumbnail previews and Picture-in-Picture are also features available in V4. Thumbnail previews allow viewers to quickly gain more context into the content at their fingertips. Picture-in-Picture is a feature that lets viewers keep scrolling through content while simultaneously viewing a video floating in a corner of the screen.
Together, these new features deliver a more engaging, less disruptive experience for your audiences as they seek the content they’d like to watch.
Faster startup for your audiences
For mobile viewers, who are constantly on-the-go, speed is mission critical. With all of its performance enhancements, we’re proud to share that V4 is more stable, and faster than ever before – preloading ads 2x faster and yielding a 10x faster time to first frame.
Improved experience for app developers
Finally, reducing the time and effort that developers spend on integrating top-notch video experiences is of utmost importance to us. There are a number of updates in V4 that drive a more developer-friendly experience:
- The iOS SDK has been entirely rewritten in Swift, allowing the SDK to exploit the latest trends and technologies developed by Apple, while maintaining backward compatibility for apps using Objective-C.
- With decoupled APIs, there is now a distinction between the player and the user interface, giving you the flexibility to use the player in multiple ways and when it is convenient for your app.
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Interested in learning more about JW Player’s native mobile SDKs? See the feature set for iOS and Android on our Native Mobile SDK product page.