MX Player has more loyal customers than Hotstar, Amazon and Netflix

With India becoming the second largest Internet market and one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world, over-the-top content (OTT) platforms have gained huge popularity in the country.

People in the country are fast exploring and lapping onto exciting and new content offered over the Internet through live streaming or OTT platforms. The number of users is growing with every passing month.

Close to about 30% of the OTT users have registered with three or more on-demand platforms, as per a survey report by market research firm Unomer.

Among the several OTT players, Times Internet-owned MX Player emerged as a platform that had the most percentage, about 21%, of loyal customers using only its platform. Amazon, Netflix and Hotstar followed in terms of loyalty with 15%, 14% and 14% respectively.

However, more than 50% of MX player users were using more than 3 OTT platforms, said the conducted in-app surveys with over six million smartphone users between May 01 and May 25 this year.

In Jan last year, Times Internet had acquired a majority stake in MX Player for about $200 million. Globally, the MAUs and DAUs for the platform stand at 275 million and 100 million respectively.

Meanwhile, over 62% of Amazon and Netflix users engaged in over 3 and more platforms.

Overall,  Hotstar and MXPlayer had the highest share of OTT audience. The survey further showed overlap for top OTT apps occurred on Hotstar, MX Player and Jio Tv.

On-demand video is as popular as social media and e-commerce sites, they have become an intrinsic part of smartphone user experience across regions, said Unomer CEO and founder Vinay Bapna.

Region-wise, OTT platforms such as Hotstar, MX Players, Netflix, Amazon were almost as equally popular in metros as in non-metros such as Patna, Kanpur and Jaipur.

The female audience of OTT platforms were marginally behind male counterpart in viewing content.

Range of mobile prices also had an impact on consumer choice to be on many different platforms.

Users, who had smartphones in price band over 20K prefer signing up more than 3 OTT platforms. Consumers with smartphones in the price range of Rs 7-10K mostly prefer single OTT platform.