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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

So this company is owned by largest South African cable network and has extensive partnership with Comcast and HBO. Further adjusting purchasing power of local consumers and ton of local content they'd have acquired over decades I am not sure what is expected.

To me takeaway it is impressive that Netflix still has more that 30% of marketshare.

I see same thing in India where *analysts and experts on twitter opine how Netflix has totally failed in India due to lack of local content and poor execution. Instead of accepting that for >90% of population Netflix is just too expensive and there is no way to run profitable business, they dream Netflix can charge a dollar and show 10 new local blockbuster movies every month.

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It’s weird to call it a cable network as it’s actually all satellite, which is how they historically got such a huge foothold due to being accessible in rural areas.

Although I imagine it’s akin to US cable companies in terms of business model.

Also, the owning company’s strategy at exclusivity (read: paying for a monopoly license) for content has how they’ve maintained their moat over the years.

I’ve done a tiny bit of contracting work for them a while back and they essentially had a money printing license. Leading to interesting organisational dysfunctions.

> It’s weird to call it a cable network as it’s actually all satellite,

You are right. I just used the term colloquially. Or perhaps working for a cable company in US I imagined satellite TV doesn't even exist :-)

> You are right. I just used the term colloquially. Or perhaps working for a cable company in US I imagined satellite TV doesn't even exist :-)

Here in Australia, cable TV no longer exists - the cable TV network was shut down last year - now the only paid TV options are streaming or satellite.

The physical cables still exist, but they are only used for Internet now. They were being upgraded to support higher bandwidth Internet and in the process support for transmitting cable TV was discontinued.

I’d be surprised if the same thing doesn’t happen elsewhere sooner or later

It is happening and big part of company's work in coming years.

An important aspect of being "successful" is the local viewing habits. At least in India, cricket is one of the biggest elements of TV viewership and the second biggest element is the cheaply produced poorly written run of the mill TV novellas that last 30 years and 1000+ episodes. Neither of which Netflix has or necessarily wants on it's platform. But if you ignore those two, Netflix comes out ahead on everything: Movies, international content, well produced TV shows etc.

I havr to disagree on the "poorly written telenovellas" bit.

Indian telenovellas (also dubbed Turkish telenovellas for some reason) are big business in South Africa in part because we have a pretty large "indian" population and the stories are culturally relatable to Africans unsurprisingly: evil Mother-in-law and sister-in-law battle with resilient wife, clever wife managing a falling household, struggles with pregnancy, etc...theres a market there that locally priduced content cannot fill due to the local industry being thoroughly underfunded.

> big business in South Africa in part because we have a pretty large "indian" population

No need to put in quotes. South Africa has an Indian population of around 1.6m. Durban is one of the largest Indian-populated cities outside of India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_South_Africans

The quotes are because can they really be called Indian if they have been there for 4+ generations or are they just South Africans. The whites there are not Dutch. The Central Africans that came a few generations ago are not Congolese etc.

It can go either way, really. No one's opinions matter here unless its the majority. When that is determined, that is what they are. Not even the people in question can declare it for themselves.

I would argue you are more your lineage than your nationality. See how we track various groups migration across the world, thousands of miles, thousands of years, with no problem.

But at the same time, I don't consider myself very aligned with my own lineage, and I describe myself as 100% "American". But, given enough time, if my bones were to be put on display a few hundred years from now, with all written record of me being lost, I would probably be referred to as something a bit different than what I declare as myself.

If you’re American you’re probably a mix of races or at the very least a mutt of several European ethnicities. You are different.

I can say outright that the Indian and Korean media is as popular as anything else in many patches of Africa.

Sounds like a lot of Marc Cherry's tv shows (Desperate Housewives, Devious Maids, Why Women Kill). That kind of stuff is excellent tv! Too bad it's not big business in the west.

Every time I search for a movie on netflix, they don't have it. I unsubscribed.

On Netflix there are x no of movies classified across certain categories, viewers choose from them and watch. Deciding on a movie and searching on Netflix will almost never work.

They also have deep relationships with cell providers who will routinely offer packages where the bandwidth usage for their platform is free.

This is huge because most people in Africa access the internet via cell carriers.

Netflix is definitely trying its hardest to get into the Indian market and I do think they are gaining some ground recently. They have picked up a lot of new telugu movies and has basically become essential if you want to stream new movies. They also have mobile only plans at 199Rs but not sure how many such subscriptions they sell but for me at least the 649Rs plan is not too bad even if my parents watch at most 1-2 movies a month on Netflix.

If they are able to get even 2 million telugu households over to subscribe the next few years, that would be a revenue of about $150 million which I think is probably much less than the amount of money they spend on telugu content.

> If they are able to get even 2 million telugu households over to subscribe the next few years,

They may as well reach to this number. But I fail to see what can Netflix do better here than local platforms with more content and better cost structure.

No way a majority of households in AP/TL spends 649 every month for Netflix unless competition hikes their prices. Most apps are about Rs. 1000-1500 a year.

10% is still like the population of France and the population of Germany combined.

Exactly, which means Netflix is smart to keep the price up, they get to serve a market that has money, and is profitable, and only this market.

> I see same thing in India where *analysts and experts on twitter opine how Netflix has totally failed in India due to lack of local content and poor execution.

That’s really true whether you believe it or not. However, it appears that Netflix seems to have understood this point. They are adding crazy amount of local content recently. Almost every notable local movie that has been released in the last year is available on Netflix now. Suddenly Amazon Prime has disappeared from the scene. That’s not the case some two years ago.

> for 90% of population Netflix is too expensive

There’s still nearly 140 million potential customers according to your calculation. You seem to underestimate the vastness of India. And more notably the people in India are crazy movie goers, from poorest of the poor to the richest of the rich.

It's similar all over Asia. Netflix set prices much higher than local platforms or other western platforms (eg. Hotstar, Prime Video, etc).

> due to lack of local content and poor execution

I mean, this did play a role as well. It's hard to justify how (comparatively) expensive Netflix is in India despite lacking so much content.

It seems they are trying to change this by tying up with Red Chili, Viacom18, and Balaji, but it's become a very competitive market now.

But that's just for Hindi media. For regional content (eg. Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi), Netflix is horrible.

> It's hard to justify how (comparatively) expensive Netflix is in India

I mean Zee is pooped out. Disney+Hotstar lost like 12 million customers and posting big losses. Sony, Disney shut shops in India. Seems YRF is the one making money following Hollywood lead in creating their own Spy universe. Groups like Reliance maybe the only one to survive. For them entertainment expense is incidental in other larger considerations. So others services are cheaper but it is not like they are or will likely make money.

> It seems they are trying to change this by tying up with Red Chili, Viacom18, and Balaji,

Yeah, they can add tons of Indian style TV shows with daily 10 min snippet + 20 min ads specially with ad supported version now available in more and more places. I think it can workout well from cost per content hours perspective.

But movie economics is impossible specially for big budget movies with top stars. Compare to US, Indian movies spend ~5 times more money on actors out of total movie budget. Something gotta change with movie budgets, viewers preferences, actor payments etc.

> For them entertainment expense is incidental in other larger considerations. So others services are cheaper but it is not like they are or will likely make money

Yep. But the other difference too is the fact that regional media has become much more popular as Tier 2/3/4 metros become better off.

This is a major differentiator as local language players (who tend to work with Jio or Amazon, or make their own platforms like Hoichoi for Bangla or Aha for Telugu) will bundle and price at a lower rate.

Basically, regional production companies undercut platforms by building their own niche platforms to act as a bundle with a competitively priced Jio membership.

Companies like Netflix and Disney Star simply can't compete with that as they never had relationships with regional producers compared to Amazon or Reliance.

> movie economics is impossible specially for big budget movies with top stars

Agreed, but the companies above also create OTT shows as well now, but have drastically fallen behind due to lack of regionalization.

Netflix+Hotstar just can't compete when a Jio, Amazon Prime, and regional OTT (Aha, Hoichoi, Koode) bundle comes out to around the same price as a Netflix India membership and gives much more content, prime delivery, and 5G+Fiber Internet

It's not that Indians are cheap, it's moreso the fact that price expectations are lower as conglomerates are using OTT/Entertainment as a loss leader to expand much higher margin industries like Telecom or ECommerce

> Netflix+Hotstar just can't compete when a Jio, Amazon Prime, and regional OTT (Aha, Hoichoi, Koode) bundle comes out to around the same price as a Netflix India membership and gives much more content.

I have a feeling that in few years instead of doing what others are doing better Netflix may drastically cut down Indian division and just keep their exclusive shows/ movies with high price and low market share.

Netflix needs India (and ASEAN) as those are their only growth markets left, but they entered both markets way too late and failed to build the right partnerships.

> Netflix may drastically cut down Indian division

It's already extremely barebones.

Netflix India originals are just Netflix branding on previously produced content by the production companies I mentioned earlier.

It's the same with Netflix Anime (I think it's rebranded Tokyo MX and TV Asahi content) and Netflix KDramas (JTBC - who also has a stake in TV Asahi and Tokyo MX - and CJ Group).

Maybe they'll buy the local company.

Naw, the RoI isn't there for Netflix as there are too many companies, and Reliance or Essel Group would swoop in anyhow.

> Disney+Hotstar lost like 12 million customers and posting big losses.

Wasn't that because they lost a contract to broadcast cricket? [1]

[1] https://deadline.com/2023/08/disney-ipl-free-cricket-india-s...

Yes it is. It just shows there are far fewer users of streaming service for non-sport entertainment.

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