Asus smartphones to come with AdBlock Plus pre-installed

Asus smartphones to come with AdBlock Plus pre-installed

Ad blocking apps have been of a little help in blocking those distracting and annoying ads. However, users still have to download and install it, which is an extra step. Soon, that won’t be the same, at least for those buying an Asus smartphone. Asus has announced that starting early 2016, it will be integrating AdBlock Plus in its stock browser by default.

“We’re extremely happy to team up with ASUS, the first major hardware manufacturer to integrate ad blocking into their mobile devices. This is another call for innovation in the ad industry — a call getting louder by the day,” said Till Faida, co-founder of AdBlock Plus.

While there are plenty of ad blocking apps for Android, this move from Asus is notable as it is one of the first manufacturers to include ad blocker into their smartphones by default. According to a report from Motherboard, there are roughly 15 million people who use the default ASUS browser on their smartphones.

While 15 million is not a big number, compared to iOS and Samsung users among others, including ad blocker may not have a large an impact. However, if other manufacturers follow the same, it could make developers and small ad companies a bit nervous.

With the release of iOS 9, Apple gave its users an option to block ads on mobile safari. For this, the user needs to download AdBlock Plus Safari extension from the app store.