Video streaming on TV screens rising in India

Market size estimated to be about $1 bn, growing at 40-45% a year

While Internet bandwidth at dirt-cheap prices triggered a boom in streaming of video on mobile phones, it is now transitioning to TV screens.

With over 30 streaming video apps competing to catch one’s eyes, there is a plethora of opportunities to view the best content on a wider screens, said analysts.

Streaming video is getting popular because of on-demand and break-free viewing.Creative original content provided by the OTT (over-the-top) players is also helping, they said.

Watching video on mobile is ideal for short-form content of 30 minutes of viewing on-the-go. But watching video on mobile is not that great for long-form content which is between 1 to 3 hours.

“For streaming video, mobile is the gateway but TV is the destination. Consumers are getting introduced to streaming video on mobile. Then, they are figuring out how to watch this on their TV screens,” said Nishith Shah, an industry insider.

“Streaming video apps are reporting better numbers on TV compared with mobiles because of longer watch times. This has resulted in more spend per user,” he said.

Since more hours of viewing is happening on the big screens, it has helped in rising smart TV sales.

Pratyush Chinmoy, head of marketing, Mirc Electronics. which operates under Onida brand, said, “Television has emerged as the centre of viewing experience for popular OTT platforms. These OTT platforms can be best experienced on the big screen that only television can provide. With TV, one can enjoy content along with family and friends which then scores over mobile due to continuous interference of other apps or calls over mobile phone which can hamper the viewing experience.

“The smart TV segment itself is witnessing a big revolution now, following the high-growth period that smartphones enjoyed in the last few years. The biggest winners have been the consumers and the OTT publishers with higher investment in the OTT content space,” he said.

Akhil Suhag, founder and CEO, FanFight, an online gaming platform for cricket, said, “Increasing trend of OTT platforms moving from mobile to television gives access to wider number of consumers for players like us. We have been associated with Hotstar and MX Player for reaching out to consumers, who are very excited to play fantasy cricket on our platform. With this engagement, we were able to scale up our subscriptions to six million players and [are] now aiming for 10 million.”

“OTT platforms have become very popular, as it gives better viewing experience as the screen size is bigger and people can spend quality time watching movies and exclusive shows with their family and friends. These platforms have been helping us reach out to right audience,” he said.

Today, every brand is now pushing smart TVs loaded with apps. Also, leading cable and DTH operators are introducing Android-powered smart set-top-boxes, a single device which is capable of handling both regular scheduled TV broadcasting as well as streaming video.

The market size for streaming video is estimated to be about $1 billion and growing at 40-45% a year, making India one of the fastest-growing OTT markets in the world.