UPDATE: The plan is now official. They have in fact, reduced the price to Rs. 199. Users can stream to a phone or a tablet in SD resolution only.
India has been on Netflix’s radar since the service went global in over 130 countries in 2016. However, the streaming giant never really customised its pricing model and kept it at par with the global price.
Realising its folly and fierce competition from other players, Netflix started experimenting with a mobile-only plan earlier this year and in a letter to investors, Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings confirmed to officially roll the mobile-only plan in Q3 this year.
We believe this plan, which will launch in the third quarter, will be an effective way to introduce a larger number of people in India to Netflix and to further expand our business.
The plan is priced at Rs. 250 per month and will be the cheapest, undercutting its current plans that start from Rs. 500 and go up to Rs. 800.
The catch with the mobile-only plan is that it will work on a single mobile device only (phone or tablet) and in standard resolution compared to its higher-priced plans that allow streaming on TVs in Full HD or 4K resolutions.
There are many video streaming services in India but the two most popular ones are Amazon’s Prime Video and Hotstar. For a price-sensitive country like India, Amazon cut its Prime program price to suit the market. Prime Video, which is part of the Amazon Prime program costs Rs. 999 annually while Hotstar offers the monthly option at Rs. 300 or can be subscribed annually for Rs. 999.
While this move will see some customer boost, it may still not be enough unless Netflix is willing to experiment with bringing more tiers or possibly offer an annual subscription like the rest of the others to lock in customers at a discounted price.
[Via Reuters]
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