Times Internet acquires MX Player for Rs 1,000 crore
The digital entertainment space in India is getting increased attention and one more acquisition has been announced and it adds spice to the competition. The latest to join the race is an arm of the prominent media group, Times Internet, which has acquired MX Player for a whopping Rs 1,000 crores.
MX Player claims to be the world’s largest video streaming platform with over 350 million users, 50% of whom are monthly users. For competition, they have established players like Netflix and the aggressive Amazon.
The MX Player app was developed by a South Korean firm J2 Interactive and targets the youth, particularly the millennials. Besides India, MX Player is available in many countries and the number of installed devices stands at 500 million.
There is this increasing tendency among many young people to skip watching television, primarily because the kind of entertainment they seek is mostly in the form of rehashed episodes of serials or borrowed content. This age-group looks for fresh and original content which MX Player aims to provide.
With the takeover by Times Internet, one can expect that the Indian language content will increase and the app will try and appeal to a large audience, urban and rural, going ahead.
Beginning next quarter, you can install the app in any of your devices, running on Android, iOS or PC platforms. MX Player, under the new management is aiming to offer its users 20 original shows and over 50,000 hours of other content in all languages.
This digital first effort by the MX Player-Times Internet combination can shake up the market and some amount of churning in the vertical is bound to occur.