YouTube's decision to customise its service for nine countries, including France and Spain, was a major blow to local competitors, but analysts said that it would not spell the end for foreign language video sites.

Several sites, particularly in Western Europe, where broadband penetration is high, had capitalised on the fact that YouTube's interface was not ideal for French and Spanish video, and attracted users who liked being able to search for and post videos in their language.

DailyMotion.com, for instance – a French site – was at one point the leader for user-generated video in France, with12 per cent of the market, compared with YouTube's 10.3 per cent.

YouTube's new services would significantly peg back the advantage these competitor sites had, analysts said, but the importance of being able to understand local tastes and customs meant that there would still be room for some smaller sites to survive – though not many.

"YouTube has tremendous appeal because of its international content, which adds a layer that local players can't compete with," Rebecca Jennings, a senior analyst with Forrester, said. "There's different appetite for different types of content globally, though. In South America, for instance, soap operas are enormously popular; in Asia it's game shows. Generally, local players are able to understand those demands better."

Aleksandra Bosnjak, an analyst with Ovum, said: "To a certain extent media markets always remain local, because it depends on local players to understand what's going on. Also, the younger demographic often has its own language and its own way of connecting. YouTube's success in foreign markets will depend on its ability to recognise these cultural differences."

The figures do not make pleasant reading for YouTube's competition.

According to Comscore, the research firm, YouTube is now the number one video-sharing in France, with 7.7 million unique users, surpassing DailyMotion's 6.6 million.

In Germany, Google-owned sites – which include Google Video and YouTube – account for 9.9 million streamers, whereas DailyMotion.com has only 1.1 million. The second most popular site after YouTube, Clipfish.de, has only 2.8 million streamers, less than a third of Google's total.

Enrique DuBois, the founder of the Spanish video-sharing site Wamba, which launched earlier this year, said he was "concerned" about his site's ability to compete with YouTube in the light of today's announcement.

"In the past, competitors which ran local language sites had a point of differentiation from YouTube," he told Times Online. "Now they don't, so it is going to get harder."

Michael Arrington, author of the blog TechCrunch, said that what was remarkable about YouTube's decision to provide localised versions of its service was that it hadn't happened before.

But Ms Jennings said that making sure the service complied with the relevant copyright legislation, as well as conducting the research into which markets were most likely to respond to an 'own language' site would have taken some time.

"In southern Europe, these types of services haven't taken off like they have elsewhere," she said. "There's also the question of which regions have sufficient broadband penetration to make the venture worthwhile."

YouTube announced today that it would localise its service in France, Spain, Italy, Holland, France, Brazil, Poland and Japan, as well as the UK and Ireland.

Categories, channels, community sections, and comments would all be specific to individual countries, the company said.

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