According to the latest study published by DATAXIS, OTT video services continued their strong growth (+30%) between 2020 and 2021.
In total, the number of OTT service subscriptions reached 6.5 million at the end of 2021 (compared to 5 million at the end of 2020). Of this total, subscriptions to mobile operator offerings accounted for 26%, or 1.7 million subscriptions.
Netflix and Showmax occupy the top two spots in this market, followed by Video Play, the service launched by South African mobile operator Vodacom, which alone accounts for 17% of market share.
According to DATAXIS, in a region where mobile internet is more accessible and affordable than fixed internet, OTT platforms will have to adapt their models so that their content is also accessible on mobile devices.
According to DATAXIS, mobile operators enjoy many advantages over fixed internet, which suffers from unstable connections, high prices, and a lack of payment options: they benefit from their own platforms, and their applications are designed to use less bandwidth and allow for more flexible streaming.
DATAXIS therefore believes that in the coming years, video consumption will depend on the number of mobile subscriptions and predicts that this number will increase by 8% per year over the next five years, representing a 50% increase in five years in a global market growing by 15% to a total of 1.25 billion subscriptions in 2026.
