US OTT soars but Netflix loses market share in US
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 22 August 2019

The generally accepted disappointing second quarter results from Netflix have been followed up by research from eMarketer showing that the SVOD juggernaut may be slowing down.

The survey calculated that by the end of 2019,182.5 million people in the US will have viewed content via subscription over-the-top (OTT) services, representing 55.3% of the population. While Netflix was still by far the most popular subscription service, rivals like Hulu and Amazon Prime Video were gaining share. Netflix’s projected share will be 87.0%, as smaller rivals lead to the decline of its dominance.

Despite Netflix missing subscriber growth expectations in Q2, eMarketer projects it will experience strong growth for the remainder of the year, up 7.6% from 2018 and totalling 158.8 million viewers form an overall market comprising 205.9 million OTT subs. This said the analyst will be driven by the platform’s slate of original content, including the new seasons of Stranger Things, The Irishman and Orange Is the New Black.

Chasing Netflix down in 2019 is Amazon Prime Video will remain the second-largest subscription OTT provider by viewers in the US (52.9% penetration). In total, Amazon is projected to have 96.5 million viewers, 8.8% higher than in 2018. By 2021, the number of Amazon Prime Video viewers will reach a third of the US population.

2019 has been a good year for Hulu, with Disney gaining control of the service , and eMarketer forecasts that in the US this year Hulu will reach 75.8 million viewers, accounting for 41.5% of subscription OTT video service users. The number of individual viewers will grow by 17.5% in 2019. However, the analyst notes that the that rate is down significantly from the company’s 49.6% growth spurt in 2018.

“Netflix has faced years of strong competition for viewers, coming from streaming video platforms, pay-TV services and even video games,” said eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom commenting on the research.