Dubai: Television content still rules the hearts and minds of regional viewers — the only difference is that it’s not being viewed from the confines of just the living rooms of viewers.
Viewing on the go and via any mobile platform is trending, and not just among the always-connected generation.
“While the main chunk of this user base tends to be in the 18-25 year old demographic, older audiences are catching up with getting comfortable viewing content while on the go,” said Mai Ghazy El Dahan, regional Head of Content at Vuclip, the content aggregator app. “But their preferences tend to be slightly different, with more of news and lifestyle programming being favoured.
“The younger generation, no surprises there, are all in for music, Hollywood movies, etc.”
Vuclip recently came out with findings that showed 82 per cent of UAE based respondents in a survey favouring a single over-the-top app for access to regional and international video content.
And 75 per cent had a marked preference for mobile video apps to enable a ‘better’ browsing experience in their native languages.
The average time Vuclip subscribers spend browsing for content is around 25 minutes a month. While the app download is free, subscribers need to pay for access to certain content.
The company’s target is to work towards reaching a level of 120 minutes in the medium term. (That would require a bit of help from telecom providers in how ‘competitively’ they can price-in their mobile data packages, or being generous in deploying free wi-fi hotshots. For otherwise, viewing content on the go can leave quite a dent on subscriber wallets.)
“About three years ago, which was the time Vuclip had launched, there was a vague awareness among broadcasters and video content providers that mobile viewing was going to drive trends in the industry,” said El Dahan. “The big broadcasters such as MBC have been early adopters, but with some of the other content providers we had to go through a process of educating them.
“Many are switching to offering select content through their own web portals to (third-party) apps as well. The transition from portals to apps will be dramatic.”
Vuclip lists a library of one million plus videos in its portfolio. Apart from tie-ups with broadcasters, there are also associations with the telcos to get access to as wide an audience base as possible. The video-on-demand provider currently lists 7 million subscribers through its operations in six countries. In this region, it is available in the UAE and Egypt.
“We have been acquiring regional content and given the nature of the demographic in the UAE, a lot of Bollywood and Tagalog as well,” said El Dahan. “The approach would obviously be different in Egypt where 79 per cent of those polled chose Arabic content as their main preference.”
When it comes to the UAE, 75 per cent of existing Vuclip viewers in UAE had a preference for content in their native language, and, interestingly, 71 per cent indicating the availability of Arabic language content as their choice.
