Netflix has led the South Korean online streaming industry for years. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 7 (Korea Bizwire) — After enjoying strong growth earlier in the year, the global video streaming platform Netflix is facing declining popularity in South Korea.
The situation is the same for South Korea’s major over-the-top (OTT) service providers such as Wavve, Watcha Inc. and Tving. All four companies saw their number of users decline after peaking in April.
This is primarily because a number of new users have cancelled their subscriptions due to lack of compelling content.
Against this backdrop, these companies are working on different strategies to prevent an exodus of new users.
According to app analysis platform “Mobile Index” on Monday, the number of monthly active users (MAU) for Netflix has been on a declining path in South Korea, falling to 4.79 million in May and 4.66 million in June after peaking at 4.81 million in April.
Local OTT service providers are not an exception.
The MAU for Wavve fell from 3.2 million in April to 2.95 million in May and 2.71 million in June. The MAU for Tving and Watcha also slid to 1.38 million and 0.43 million in June, respectively, from 1.52 million and 0.49 million in April.
Wavve offers some 1,000 titles, including movies and drama series, from both home and abroad, to paid subscribers. (image: Content Wavve Corp.)
“There are many users who started using OTT along with the increase in at-home activities due to the outbreak of coronavirus but eventually cancelled the service due to a lack of interesting content,” an OTT analyst said.
“There are many cases where people watch all of the content they want in a short period of time and then fail to find other interesting content and eventually cancel their subscription.”
To prevent user exodus, these companies are formulating different strategies.
Netflix, for example, is placing more focus on its existing strength – original content. In particular, Netflix is accelerating efforts to develop webtoon intellectual property (IP)-based content.
Wave is going all-out to secure original content as well as exclusive content which is available only at Wavve.
Wavve plans to provide its users with as many as eight original series by the end of this year, including SF8 and Alice, while attempting to source a large number of foreign productions in collaboration with Sony, CBS and NBCUniversal.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
