Victor Ezeja
AdminFollowing stiff competition in Africa’s streaming market, Netflix has lost its market leader status after its share of the streaming market shrunk to 35 per cent while Showmax grew to 40 per cent of the video streaming sector.
This is based on the latest data from Omdia Research, a tech research-based firm, which indicates that Netflix lost its prime status in the African streaming market to Showmax, which now has 1.8 million subscribers. After racing to 400,000 within its first two years on the continent, Netflix has since added 1.2 million subscribers in the past four years.
As more competitors like Amazon Prime, Showmax and NBC Universal’s Peacock entered the region and stepped up their playbook, they have been squeezing the market share of Netflix which accounted for 40 per cent of the African streaming market in 2021. South Africa remains Netflix’s largest market, accounting for 73.3 per cent of its subscriber base with Nigeria accounting for 10.5 per cent.
An industry analytics firm, Digital TV Research had revealed that while Africa had 41 million pay-TV subscribers as of the end of 2022, video streaming accounts for less than 10 per cent of the subscriber base. Streaming players like Netflix and MultiChoice’s Showmax have since deployed several growth tactics over the last three years, including splurging on new content and cutting subscription prices to win new customers.
Marc Jury, Showmax CEO had earlier disclosed that the streaming service experienced a 26 per cent year-on-year growth in paid subscribers in the last four years as it doubled down on local content production. The company also dedicated $1 billion to content production and acquisition on the continent in the financial year ending in 2023.
According to Omdia, one hindrance to Netflix’s subscriber growth of Netflix, which entered Africa in 2016, is the low penetration of credit and debit cards in many regions, which has affected how Africans pay for the streaming platform.
Africa’s streaming video-on-demand industry is projected to grow by 10.4 per cent annually while Netflix is expected to grow by half of that number as other platforms are expected to take up more of the California-based company’s slowing subscriber base.
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