If you have heard about Netflix, then it is about time you hear about ShowMax. Just like Netflix, ShowMax is a video streaming service that was launched in South Africa by Naspers back in 2015 way before Netflix expanded its footprint to global markets, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa included. Naspers, if you don’t know, owns MultiChoice Africa which is the company behind DStv and GOtv.
ShowMax has been available exclusively to users in South Africa since its launch and finally it expanding to other African countries, 36 countries to be exact. Naspers has always had plans to expand to other countries way before Netflix did so. ShowMax had expected Netflix to announce its global expansion later this year and it had plans to launch its services to other African countries by then. As you already know, Netflix announced its global expansion in January which was a surprise for ShowMax but this did not affect its expansion plans.
ShowMax claims to have the largest subscription video on-demand catalogue on the continent and the company is taking this catalogue to the rest of the continent.
“In the first four months of 2016 we pretty much doubled the number of active subscribers, and that’s despite the entrance of Netflix into Africa,” ShowMax’s chief product officer Barron Ernst told Forbes. “Just having the most comprehensive content catalogue in Africa isn’t enough – you also have to help your subscribers find that content. We’ve put a huge amount of effort into refining our recommendations engine and improving the content discovery process, and thanks to this have seen an uplift in views-per-user of more than 15%.”
ShowMax costs $7.99 per month and according to Forbes, it has 15,000 TV show episodes and movies claiming that almost 10,000 hours of viewing are added to the platform every month. ShowMax localizes its services in the continent and the company says that this is what differentiates it from Netflix.
“Localisation of the service as a whole is crucial. Local content plays one part in that, but so do local payment options, platform modifications to cater to local needs, and partnerships with local ISPs. We’ve had a really positive response to the introduction of downloads precisely because high-speed internet connectivity isn’t yet ubiquitous in South Africa,” Barron Ernst told Forbes. It’s still not clear if ShowMax plans to partner with ISPs in the other countries it is expanding to, we will wait and see if this will happen.
Some of the countries ShowMax is expanding to include, Botswana, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Reunion, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Also Read: You Can Use This Website to Check the Content Netflix Has for Kenya Before Subscribing
