The video streaming market is currently dominated by Netflix which is available in 130 countries. Netflix is not the only player in this industry as there are other key players such as ShowMax which is owned by Naspers, the same company that owns MultiChoice Africa.
ShowMax has been around for less than a year and is reporting that it has surpassed the 10 million views mark. This is the cumulative number of TV shows and movies watched by its subscribers from when it started operations in August 2015. In a blog post, the company went ahead to reveal that, “more than five million hours of content have been viewed, the equivalent of more than 500 years if played back-to-back.”
ShowMax prides itself for having he largest subscription video catalogue in Africa. This is 100% true since Netflix doesn’t have streaming rights for all its content on its catalogue in Africa. With that said, even if you have Netflix, you will not be able to watch some content as it may be blocked in your country. You can use VPNs to go around this but most people don’t bother with that.
Read More: You Can Use This Website to Check the Content Netflix Has for Kenya Before Subscribing
Back to ShowMax, the company is excited to see these numbers. “We knew we had a good product and an incredible engineering team when we launched ShowMax, but hitting this milestone in under a year is tangible proof that we’re on the right track,” said Barron Ernst, Chief Product Officer for ShowMax.
The most interesting figure to know will be the user base, this is what will tell us if the 10 million views number is important or not. ShowMax is not revealing these figures and its head of communications Richard Boorman told Memeburn, “I hate to say it, but we don’t disclose subscriber numbers.” Most of these companies never reveal their user base for one reason or another so am not surprised.
We can still speculate on the user base number and say it may be in the 100,000 neighborhood. If this is true, it will mean that each user is responsible for 100 views on the site which is not farfetched since the company started offering its services 9 months ago.
“The positive reception we’ve had so far has come from listening to the needs of our customers and avoiding a one-size-fits-all mentality. There’s still loads to do and we’ve got a bunch of developments in the pipeline, but I’m pleased with what we’ve achieved so far”, concluded Ernst.
ShowMax is available in over 37 countries including Kenya. I have been using it for a while and so far am impressed. The ability to download shows and movies and when them when offline is very attractive to me. This is very important when you are travelling or you are in an area with unstable internet connection.
Also Read: Nasper’s owned video streaming service, ShowMax, is now available in Kenya
