This Friday, Showmax celebrates its first year anniversary. Showmax is Naspers’ answer to Netflix. By its statistics, it has had an impressive and busy year.
The South African based Video on demand service has clocked up to 10 million views, which is equivalent to 700 years’ worth of TV shows and movies.
According to ShowMax chief product officer Barron Ernst “My intention isn’t to boast, because we’ve got loads more to do, but dispassionately I’d say we’ve achieved a fair amount in that time.”
He added that enabling content downloads, setting up data usage caps, putting together a cash voucher system and implementing multiple user profiles were some of the tougher technical challenges they had solved, with additional tweaks and upgrades taking place on an almost daily basis.
“On top of that, since the launch we’ve added support for AirPlay, Apple TV, Chromecast, the DStv Explora, and more smart TVs,” he said.
Fin24 has reported on a spike in streaming content usage after the launch of services like ShowMax and Netflix.
Showmax states that the peak viewing time is between 18:00 and 23:00, with the absolute peak at around 20:00 and the service is most used on Sundays.
Ernst said a recent survey of just over 1 000 respondents found that internet cost is the main reason holding people back from subscribing.
“Only 15% of people find normal TV easier to use. Somewhat surprisingly, only 9% said that they don’t subscribe because they can pirate the content illegally,” he said.
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cost and availability of decent internet connectivity is the biggest hurdle, but we believe there are elegant solutions, some of which we’ve already deployed and some of which are still in the works,” Ernst said.
