Home » Press & News » News » It rained OTTs in India in 2018
Wherever you go – in metros or in towns – in arguably the world’s fastest growing economy, young and old Indians alike are logging on to their mobile handsets and their PCs, to watch the latest from a clutch of OTT platforms as well as messaging services. Like the rest of the world, India too is in the thick of a digital video consumption boom. And it’s all thanks to the mobile data price wars initiated by India’s fastest growing telco Reliance Jio. The skirmishes have resulted in mobile data being priced at probably the lowest in the world.
Statistics underline that OTT is beginning to capture a large chunk of Indian viewers’ daily video watchtime. Estimates are that video consumption has been growing at 500 per cent per annum and most of it is coming from mobile handsets aka smart phones.
Over 65 per cent of 450+million internet users in India are currently mobile-only and the country is adding six million users every month, as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data. By the end of 2017, smartphones had outnumbered its users as 47.4 per cent users possessed a smartphone or more each. Predictions are that this explosion in the internet and mobile penetration is expected to continue with 640 million Indians expected to buy an internet pack, and 700 million expected to buy a snazzy smart device by 2020. Needless to say, online video – one of the most consumed pieces of content – is expected to grow as well as the number of platforms offering it.
2018 saw the Indian OTT landscape dotted with more than 30 OTT platforms – giant foreign owned and global, broadcaster-led and independent ones. Additionally, newer OTT players are pacing the sidelines with a shift in focus from the English and Hindi speaking urban youth to mass market, regional audiences.
Source : bit.ly/2VxaFnQInvestor Relations