OTT video will hit 200 million subscribers in the Asia Pacific by 2021, double the figure from 2016, said Rethink Technology Research. Pure play subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services will dominate the sector, dwarfing those provided by operators, the company said.
Subscription revenues will reach $10 billion by 2021 from $6.5 billion today, reaching 200 million subscribers, twice that of 2016. Pure play SVoD services will dominate (at $6.29 billion) ahead of operator supplied services.
India will be the second largest regional market in terms of OTT video subscribers by 2021, reaching 14.6 million by 2021. Indonesia and Japan follow India, with each increasing subscriber numbers to 9.96 million and 8.1 million by 2021, respectively, said the researchers.
Total subscription revenue will reach $6.29 billion from pure play SVOD services in Asia Pacific, such as Netflix; YoukuTudou, iQiyi, Tencent Video, LeTV; Hooq; Amazon Video; iflix; YuppTV, Hotstar, NexGTV, Spuul, Eros Now, BoxTV; Catchplay; Hulu, dTV; Pooq, Tving and Watcha Play.
“Asia Pacific is made up of a multitude of contrasting individual markets, making it fragmented and complex with broadband penetration above 50%, in some regions and below 10% in others,” said a statement from Rethink Technology Research.
“China will make up 60% of SVOD revenue by 2021, but is low today, dominated by AVOD, with SVOD just introduced,” it added.
The countries covered in this report account for around 3.3 billion of Asia Pacific’s entire 4.4 billion population.