The Future of Online Streaming Services

The streaming outlook is fastly evolving from traditional video streaming, where content was king to offer a superior user experience across the platform.

Recently, the industry is vastly led by Netflix with 159 million subscribers around the world but, the trend is going down. Recently Netflix reported that they have added fewer than 50% of the estimated subscribers in the second quarter of 2019. The buzz around the industry is centered around the entry of big players like WarnerMedia’s HBO Max launch around September 2020 to offer bundled service of Disney+, ESPN & HULU, Apple’s launch of AppleTV+ in November 2019 with $6 billion investment into original content, and many other.

Mergers and assests in the industry are in full established as estimated earlier. WarnerBros Merger of AT&T, & Fox Studios, Viacom & CBS Merger to start new streaming service and many more have aroused the traditional rivalry to jump on the war ground to capitalize on the growth.

In the context of Netflix, it may certainly hurt the growth but may not put them down. There are three basis for this belief huge content library, loyal customers as well as superior user experience. In the case of other players, yes, everyone will burn their fingers to the greater good of the industry.

On the technology front, we are going to see some high-end technological development like Low-latency live streaming, efficient video codec, highly efficient CDN, Application of blockchain & Artificial intelligence as well as highly equipped OTT platforms focusing on user experience.

In the future, price wars, mergers, consolidation and mainly the merge services will rule the industry. It’s definite, users are not going to subscribe for more than 3 services at a time and don’t want to invest more than $21 USD for all the services combined - According to a study. Someone has to aggregate all the services and put it in front of consumers to consume the content.