E-commerce giant Alibaba dropped a bomb on the industry, and announced their own streaming service a la netflix was coming to China. This service is scheduled to launch in either August or early September.
The new streaming service heading towards China and select few other countries is called ‘TBO’, Tmall Box Office, is set to launch soon featuring many shows for streaming, some even created by themselves not unlike Netflix. This was confirmed by Patrick Liu of Alibaba in a press conference in Shanghai.
TBO arrives just at the right moment to the streaming businesss in Asia. There is a potential market of several millions of users, offering many more in possible revenue, and many companies (such as Baidu, Inc., Tencent o Sohu) are already fighting for customers. “Out objective, the objective of everyone at Alibaba is to redefine spare time at home”, declared Liu. “we are aiming to become in the HBO of America, to be like Netflix in the United States.”
This platform will mostly have 90% of its content behind a paywall, just like Netflix, but surprisingly, the remaining 10% will be free for any user, just as the directives of the company clarified.
Netflix, on the other hand, has been planning their launch in China but haven’t found the right moment to do so. Over there the company awaits eagerly for the adoption of the company and possible growth, as China is a country that consumes a lot of these services. The issue playing against them, though, would be whatever the local government has to say about a foreign company operating on their territory.
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