Netflix and Amazon Prime market share gain at the cost of Indian platforms - Hotstar, VOOT, Jio Cinema.
Just
like the smartphone segment, the video streaming space (also known as
OTT or over the top) in the country is witnessing a fierce fight
between indigenous and global players with the latter gaining a
stronger foothold in the domestic market.
According
to the latest data, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, two of the
dominant players globally, have steadily grown their market share in
the country this year at the expense of local firms such as market
leader Hotstar, Jio TV and Jio Cinema.
Los
Gatos (California)-headquartered Netflix
saw its market share grow to 6.3 per cent till October from a mere
0.5 per cent as in the beginning of the year while Amazon Prime
Video’s share grew more than two and half times to 10.8 per cent
from 4 per cent, according to KalaGato, a market intelligence firm.
The figures are based on installed user base derived from a sample of
over one million unique smartphone users. Viewership over mobile
comprises 83 per cent of the total video consumption online,
according to Comscore.
As
Indian users took to cheaper smartphones and faster and cheaper data,
backed by a wave of internet proliferation of sorts triggered by
Reliance Jio, the demand for video OTT platforms has also shot up.
Local audience, like their counterparts in the developed markets, are
also opening their purse strings for video subscription services. A
telling statistics is that over two dozen OTT services have sprung up
only in the last 18 months.
This includes offerings from leading
media houses like Balaji Telefilms (Alt Balaji), Viacom 18 (VOOT) and
ZEE Media Corp (ZEE5).
While
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which launched services in India in
2016, have an early-mover advantage, as their growth is primarily
seen being driven by their expansive content library and superior
product experience built on a trove of data and insights from
operations in other geographies.
“There
are two to three factors that drive this. One is the range of content
and titles they provide owing to their access to deeper and broader
content, with them being global players. The second differentiation
is technology and user interface: How good their recommendation
engines are, how they are able to anticipate and predict what the
consumer wants, and how you present the relevant content to the
consumer in an easy-to-search fashion,” said Ajay Gupta, a partner
at AT Kearney who looks at communications, media and technology
practice at the consulting firm. “The third driver is the creation
of synergies between the e-commerce and content business, as has been
in the case of Amazon. That’s an interesting synergy because
ultimately it’s the same target audience that is internet savvy,”
he added.
The
fact that Amazon
Prime Video comes bundled with the company’s next-day delivery
service has brought it huge number of users. Netflix also signed up
with Airtel, wherein the telecom operator gave a three-month
subscription of Netflix with every Airtel post-paid connection.
“Almost two lakh users came to Netflix through Airtel tie-up, which
was rolled out in August,” said an analyst tracking the company.
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