Newsletter 7th of April: Amazon Prime Video – Another Giant Now Launching a Nordic Service
NYHETSBREV
7 April 2021
Although Amazon Prime Video has been available to the Nordic households for over four years, it has not been able to compete with the other US based SVOD brands, nor with the local ones. However, in March Amazon was relaunched with a new, local Swedish profile. According to the advertising campaign “Streaming is believing” – soon we’ll know if that is true also for Amazon.
Following the launch of the local Swedish retail service Amazon.se last fall, the global giant has also relaunched its SVOD service Amazon Prime Video. As of March 1st, the launch implied a “more local focus”, including the content itself as well as the user interface and more subtitles. It has also been hinted that local original productions might be in the pipeline.
Looking at the current library, Amazon has the largest quantity of content in the Nordics. By being the lowest-priced SVOD service in the market, Amazon actually offers the lowest cost per unit, based on number of titles. A monthly subscription of Amazon in Sweden today amounts to 65 SEK. This means that Amazon offers 77 titles per SEK in Sweden. As a comparison, the Netflix library gives 53 titles per SEK, scoring second-best in cost per unit.
However, despite its’ huge library and low price, Amazon has not managed to gather any larger group of subscribers in the Nordics. At least not until recently. Mediavision Fall Analysis 2020 pointed to a result lower than 500,000 paying subscribers in the four Nordic countries, after four years of market presence. There is likely a strong connection between the growth of the SVOD service and Amazon’s e-commerce. This also explains why Amazon has now adapted and launched both of these in Sweden. Mediavision is soon to release Q1 figures, including the Amazon subscriber base.
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