More scintillating numbers from APAC video streamer Viu arrived this week. The PCCW-owned firm blasted past 41.4 million monthly active users (MAUs) at the end of 2019, growing by 35% from the previous year – driving video views up 69% to 5.7 billion.
Viu is no stranger to pulling off trumpet-blowing PR stunts and Faultline is no stranger to lapping them up, yet this time around we feel like Viu is compensating for something. Perhaps sugarcoating over a recent and rare sign of weakness?
It comes only a couple of months after Viu was forced into a dramatic about turn as a result of India being well and truly annexed by Netflix, which saw Viu exit the country around the middle of December for unspecified reasons.
As we reported at the time, Viu’s departure went against the grain of OTT video in the booming Indian video market. Ultimately, Viu struggled to match US content spend. In truth, Viu wasn’t even anywhere close to matching the likes of Netflix and Amazon, which are spending as much as $10 million on a single show, while Viu’s entire annual content budget is reportedly in the region of $15 million.
Founded in late 2015, Viu has a history of trying to dress up its MAU base as a fully paid subscriber footprint and unfortunately the company has never broken out these numbers separately. Our educated guess is that about one-quarter of Viu MAUs sign up to the premium service where rates begin at the equivalent of around $3.50 a month, but are usually sold as part of a bundle bought through local mobile operators. Content licensing for PCCW’s other OTT video offering Now Player are very different, with Viu having more overseas content and Now TV buying sports rights like the Barclays Premier League soccer from the UK.
More interestingly, as well as publishing its own MAU numbers this week, Viu’s press release also included a handy table ranking it against a handful of rival video streaming apps for four categories – IAP (in-app purchase) revenues, MAUs, total time, and average time per user. Viu came second to Netflix in all four races during December 2019 across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, but the data shows a few surprise results.
Viu’s definition of in-app purchases must be different from most people’s. This is usually associated with TVoD platforms rather than with pay monthly SVoD models. Nevertheless, the fact Viu ranked second for IAP revenues among its main competition suggests that a sizable number of subscribers are taking the paid premium option.
This is because IAP revenue excludes any revenue generated outside iOS and Google Play app stores such as advertising and e-commerce, so only measuring any paid downloads and in-app revenue net of the 30% commission guzzled by each of the two app stores.
Malaysian SVoD platform iflix ranks third for MAUs but comes in at 8th for IAP revenue and 7th for average time per user. Comparing Viu’s 41.4 million MAUs (majority free tier) to iflix’s paid subscriber base of approximately 30 million across 13 countries, it is surprising to see iflix so low down the pecking order, but of course many key markets are missing from the data behind the table above.
Hooq, the joint venture between Singtel, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros, also made the top 10 for all 4 categories, albeit well below Viu for IAP revenues and MAUs, ranking 9th for both.
Core to Viu’s mission from the beginning has been original content and now the company is claiming that over 40% of viewers (it calls them Viu’ers) have watched Viu Original productions. Outside of original productions, Viu has most notably landed streaming rights for the South Korean movie Parasite which recently swept the Oscars – available in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines so soon after theatrical release.
All in all, video segment revenue grew 32% in 2019, according to PCCW.