Increased Activation Of Streaming Services Amid COVID-19

Photo illustration (Glenn Carstens / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The COVID-19 pandemic has urged people to do activities at home. Because of this, people automatically find it difficult to find entertainment. Streaming services are a target for entertainment sources and this is recognized by a survey by Media Partners Asia, which was reported by Variety.

As much as 60 percent increase in service activation occurred in Southeast Asia. Netflix is clearly the main leader in this market, followed by VIU, which offers free to premium services as well as cheap packages. There is a reason why they are the most accessed streaming services during this self-quarantine.

Netflix, which has original content, is starting to capture the hearts of the Korean fan market with Korean dramas and anime. Meanwhile, VIU is known for its Korean film and drama content which is always updated according to broadcast hours in South Korea. Both of these services provide unquestionable quality content.

Apart from the two, the YouTube service also dominates in this streaming competition. YouTube, which is accessed for free, has a variety of content that you can do at home. Reporting from Bloomberg, cooking content has experienced a rapid increase in viewership since the announcement of the lockdown in a number of countries. Generally, most cooking videos with simple ingredients are the ones that are most searched for.

This clearly happened because many activities at home made people unable to continue to rely on food delivery services or online applications. In Thailand, a streaming service from China, iQiYi is starting to be loved by serials from China which are starting to find their fans.

Recently inaugurated in Southeast Asia, this service is starting to grow its customers in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand. Meanwhile in Singapore, Amazon Prime is the most widely used streaming service.

According to the Executive Director of Media Partners Asia, Vivek Couto, streaming services must think of a strategy to retain new users in the second half of 2020 even until this pandemic ends.

In addition, competition for streaming services will also continue to increase following the arrival of a number of new streaming services, namely HBO Go, Tencent, and Disney Plus. These three services have yet to launch in Asia, but people are starting to be interested in exclusive content which is generally not available on television like other services.