Netflix Leads Premium Video Market in Southeast Asia

Netflix leads the premium video market in Southeast Asia, according to new analysis from Media Partners Asia (MPA), but YouTube and TikTok continue to take the lion’s share of all video streaming minutes in the region.

Southeast Asia Online Video Consumer Insights & Analytics: A Definitive Study utilized MPA’s AMPD Research Platform to track video consumption trends in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. In the first quarter of this year, YouTube took a whopping 68 percent of streaming minutes in those markets, followed by 21 percent for TikTok, with premium video accounting for just 10 percent of streamed minutes.

Of that 10 percent, Netflix is out front with 40 percent of premium video streamed minutes. Viu landed a 15 percent share, driven in part by its Korean content slate (in Indonesia, it fared even better, with 20 percent of premium video viewing). WeTV, owned by Tencent, averaged 13 percent of premium video streaming minutes, led by gains in Indonesia. Premium Chinese content and free-to-air dramas in Thailand and Malaysia propelled iQIYI to a 10 percent share. Vidio had a 9 percent share, driven by original dramas, local and international football and free-to-air content.

“With streaming minutes growing each quarter, we find that the battle for consumer time is not zero-sum, but certainly competitive for smaller streaming platforms,” said Dhivya T, analyst at MPA. “In Thailand, for example, Line TV consumption has softened significantly as new Thai titles are no longer limited to Line TV but also available on WeTV, Viu and so on. New breakout titles are critical to capture and sustain consumption share—this is evident with WeTV and Vidio originals in Indonesia, Disney+ in Singapore, Viu and Netflix’s new Korean titles across the region and iQIYI in Malaysia and Thailand.”

In Q1, premium video platforms in Southeast Asia added 4.9 million new subscribers, MPA reports, to reach a total of 24.2 million customers in the region. About half of that was at Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar following launches in Indonesia and Singapore. At 4.6 million subs, Disney is now the second-largest SVOD service in Southeast Asia, even though it only generated 2 percent of the premium video streamed minutes in the period. Viu accounted for 12 percent of the new SVOD subs in Q1, boosted by its Korean dramas and strong telco partnerships. AIS Play and Netflix each accounted for 9 percent of the new SVOD customers in Q1, with WeTV and Vidio at 5 percent each.