Amazon Prime Video has witnessed an impressive lead in the fast-growing and valued Japanese streaming video sector, according to a study conducted by Singaporean consultancy, Media Partners Asia (MPA).
Amazon Prime Video dominates the Japanese SVOD market
The Media Partners Asia report titled ‘Japan Online Video Consumer Insights & Analytics’ indicated that Japan’s subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) market had an overall of 44 million subscribers as of August 2021. Out of this, Amazon Prime Video encompassed 14.6 million (33%) of these subscribers. Netflix dawdled with 6 million subscribers and Disney+ covered only 1.8 million subscribers.
Media Partners Asia accredited Amazon Prime Video’s solid lead in the SVOD market to the firm’s locally widespread bundled e-commerce service, the easy user interface and competitive pricing, local distribution collaborations with telecoms KDDI and NTT Docomo, and the platform’s extensive variety in content. Researchers discovered that licensed anime featured on Amazon Prime Video nearly attributed to 70% of Prime Video consumption in Japan. American movies and series drove around 20% of consumption time.
The significance of the Japanese market to the dubbed ‘streaming wars’ was apparent in the dawn of 2021 in an MPA report that anticipated New Zealand and Australia to be beaten by Japan as Netflix’s biggest revenue-producing market in the APAC region.
The new-fangled Media Partners Asia report discovered that for Netflix’s assessed 6 million Japanese subscribers, around 25% of the view time was facilitated by Korean dramas, whilst American content accredited for 15% of consumption time. As for Amazon Prime Video, anime was the chief consumption driver.
Disney+ was released in Japan in June 2020 and is still discovering its place in the SVOD market to some extent. The service is predicted to receive a big boom on October 27 when Disney will include the Star brand in the platform’s content provisions. This endeavor is projected to bring an excess of 16,000 shows to subscribers, which will be inclusive of local Japanese shows.
The Media Partners Asia study also discovered that Hulu Japan had 2.8 million subscribers, U-Next had 2.4 million subscribers, and DoCoMo Anime Store possessed 2.5 million subscribers.
The MPA report discovered that TVer, an advertisement-supported streaming portal by a syndicate of local broadcasters, has received attention from notable audiences since 2020. With widespread content that delivers free-to-air Japanese shows, dramas, sports, and news, TVer encompassed 16% of the all-inclusive premium video streamed in the country from Jan to Aug 2021. At this time, Netflix scored 10% and Amazon Prime Video scored 26% of the total consumption.
MPA executive director, Vivek Couto, stated that the SVOD sector is becoming increasingly competitive. As indicated by TVer’s success, localized content is crucial for business growth. Couto also stated that Amazon Prime Video and Netflix’s anime collection has delivered more than 40% of consumption on their portals in 2021. The executive director also added that with the expansion of Disney+ with Star and local Japanese content, competition and category expansion are inevitable.
The ‘Japan Online Video Consumer Insights & Analytics’ report by MPA’s research team was drafted through the AMPD Research Platform in collaboration with Intage, a Tokyo-based firm. Researchers have analyzed and calculated media consumption across various VOD services that are used in Japan.