Viu leads Southeast Asia’s video-streaming market with 30m users, report shows

In Southeast Asia, total online video-streaming users – excluding those on YouTube and TikTok – hit 195 million, with Hong Kong-based Viu leading the pack.

Viu original series River Where The Moon Rises / Photo credit: Viu

According to research platform Media Partners Asia (MPA), Viu pulled in 30.5 million monthly active users from markets including Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Viu offers streaming and download features, along with localized user interfaces in 16 markets across Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa.

“The opportunities in the rapidly growing online video-streaming market are immense and expected to continue to grow at 26% CAGR [compound annual growth rate] over the next three years,” said Helen Sou, chief business officer of Asia at Viu.

The Hong Kong-based streaming service took the second spot in paid subscribers and streaming minutes among major streaming platforms in Indonesia and Singapore, according to the report. Viu also stood first in terms of monthly active users and second in paid subscribers and total streaming minutes in the Philippines.

MPA’s vice president Anthony Dobson said that Viu drives subscription through premium Korean content and a growing collection of local acquisitions and original productions, which contributes to the overall growth of the subscription video on demand (SVOD) sector in Southeast Asia.

In an earlier MPA report in January, one of the later entrants in the Southeast Asian online streaming space, Disney+ Hotstar, took the top spot in Indonesia, attracting 2.5 million subscribers in the country. It was followed by Viu with 1.5 million subscribers, Vidio with 1.1 million, and Netflix with 850,000.

Indonesia in total saw a net addition of about 3.6 million subscribers between September 2020 to January 2021, according to the past report.