“Netflix is still the No. 1 subscription streaming service in the U.S., according to a new report from eMarketer, but rivals, including Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, are starting to cut into its market share,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch.
The analyst firm forecasts 182.5 million U.S. consumers will subscribe to over-the-top streaming services this year, or 53.3% of the population. Netflix is still the top choice here, with 158.8 million viewers in 2019, and it is continuing to grow… But Netflix is no longer the only option for streaming video these days. Back in 2014, it had 90% of the market. In 2019, its share will have shrunk to 87%.
This decline in market share is attributed to the rise of rival services, like Hulu and Prime Video. Hulu, for example, is estimated to reach 75.8 million U.S. viewers this year, or 41.5% of subscription service users… Prime Video, meanwhile will remain the second-largest subscription over-the-top video provider in the U.S. in 2019, the report says, with 96.5 million viewers.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is getting into this market just in time (a year earlier, at least, would have been better), as competition is really starting to heat up in the over-the-top streaming services market.
Companies won’t relish the prospect of entering the cord-cutters’ market with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ (which includes the ad-supported version of Hulu), Apple TV+, and live over-the-top services like Sony’s PlayStation Vue already having nabbed subscribers. At some point, the total costs all of these services combined approach the cable/satellite bill that cord-cutters were trying to escape in the first place. Very soon, there will be precious little room for new TV/movie subscription services.