Netflix isn’t the most popular streaming service in Kenya and its most probably because of the pricing compared to, say, Showmax. For the base package, you part with $7.99 per month, an equivalent of about Kshs 800, which is quite expensive considering Showmax sometimes charges as low as Kshs 250 for three months of watching movies and TV shows.
In a bid to net more subscribers, Netflix India has today unveiled a new mobile-only plan that costs INR 199 per month, an equivalent of Kshs 300 or $3 per month. The company says it recorded poor returns of just 2.7 million subscribers worldwide against a projected 5 million.
What’s more scary for Netflix is the loss of U.S. subscribers for the first time in nearly 10 years. For this reason, the American company is looking for new fishing grounds and India, for obvious reasons, is one of them. Given that it’s one of the most lucrative developing markets, the Asian sub-continent could be the catalyst for other emerging markets where Netflix is also targeting, including Kenya.
However, it’s hard to tell whether the new mobile-only plan will also arrive on Netflix Kenya, although it’s likely. The new plan is limited to streaming standard definition (SD) content, which isn’t the best but still great for small screens. Subscribers will only be able to stream to one device at a time.
One major caveat of the mobile-only plan is that you can’t cast content to any other device, something that most should be able to live with. On the brighter side, you can download movies and TV shows for offline viewing.
As it stands, Netflix seems to be trialing the new mobile-only plan in India before going global. The company is aware that India is a mobile-first market and in fact, it’s quick to point out that more people sign up for Netflix using mobile phones from India than anywhere else globally. Also, mobile streaming is highest in India than anywhere else around the world, something that Netflix hopes to leverage.
