This is not quite unlike the Pepsi vs Coke battle market after market. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are squaring off against each other and in the latest round in India, Amazon seems to have edged ahead of Netflix.
It is reported that there are other geographies also where Amazon has succeeded in roping in more subscribers than its rival video streaming giant. And Amazon entered the business just a year back.
However, Amazon’s better showing has been limited to India, Japan and Germany. In the rest of the global market, Netflix is still the leading video streaming service provider.
The agency, which did the survey, has gone on to clarify that the membership numbers taken by them indicate those subscribers who have used the video facility and not all the Amazon Prime customers. The comparison with Netflix has to be viewed in this perspective.
In a price sensitive market, it is the fee charged by the competitors that has proved to be the deciding factor. Amazon kept a launch price of Rs 500 per year, which it has now doubled to Rs 999 per year. This is much lower than the Rs 450 per month charged by Netflix from their customers.
It is expected that Amazon will become more aggressive in expanding its offering by localising content and tying up with telcos to keep the customers interested. If Amazon does go ahead with this stated approach of increasing videos in Indian languages, then Netflix will find the going tougher since it does not have anything to offer in terms of local content. There are also other operators, like Hotstar and SonyLiv, who offer many video services free, for Netflix to contend with.
In early 2017, Amazon had stated that it would invest $300 million for creating original content in Hindi and regional languages.