Missing out on favorite TV programme or events like church sermon or wedding has been a big deal to many Kenyans due to lack of opportunity for a replay.
Both local and International companies are now making this a thing of the past and also enabling many Kenyans to catch up with such events live as they happen irrespective of where they are beamed from.
Kenya’s Eziki limited for instance enables one to catch up with church sermon live or replay TV programmes such as news from the comfort of a mobile phone or computer when one wants. “The new technology meets the demand of our consumers who may not have time to watch or attend a particular event, spread of internet gives us the opportunity to play to them such events or programmes on their phones, tablets or computers,” says Santos Okotta, Founder Eziki.
“Through Eziki, an artist or any media organization can create their own exclusive channel where customers get to experience their videos,” he says. The company has partnered with Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, churches among others to live stream most of their events, the live streams are later converted into videos and saved within the platform to allow those who missed out to click and watch at any time on demand.
According to the 2015 edition of The Ericsson Mobility report, 60 per cent of Kenyans surveyed want freedom and flexibility when watching TV and video rather than following a schedule.
In addition to this, 45 per cent of Kenyans stated that they were satisfied with the video and streaming content while another 49 per cent said they were happy with the speed of downloading television and video content.The trend has motivated global companies such as NetFlix and South Africa’s ShowMax to venture into video on demand services in Kenya.
ShowMax, a subscription video on demand service, has launched a two-tier service for watching TV shows and movies via the internet enabled devices.
It features local favourites such as Real Househelps of Kawangware, Churchill Live, Auntie Boss, and Kona, as well as popular series and movies from Hollywood like Mr Robot, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Blue Bloods, and The Good Wife.
Subscribers can choose from a number of different download video quality levels. Using the most data-efficient setting, downloading a 20-minute TV show will use approximately 80 MB. This means that a 7.5 GB data bundle would be enough for more than 90 episodes.
Speaking about the consumer uptake of video on demand services, ShowMax CEO John Kotsaftis said: “Kenya has all the right ingredients: tech-savvy consumers, rapidly expanding internet connectivity, and an appetite for quality TV shows and movies. So why hasn’t internet TV taken off yet?
“It doesn’t matter how good your service is if you don’t first solve the data challenge for customers, particularly for the majority of people who rely on mobile internet. That’s why we designed data-saving features and the ability to download content into ShowMax from the outset. With these features and a strong focus on local content, we think ShowMax will finally crack the internet TV model in Kenya.”
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