Sweden has established itself as fertile territory for subscription video on demand, but the growth enjoyed by Netflix since its launch in October 2012 came to a halt in the second quarter.
Swedish consultancy Mediavision, which tracks the emerging streaming market says its US competitor HBO Nordic has emerged as the fastest growing streaming service in the Swedish market.
“What we are seeing now are the first signs of a maturing SVOD market. The slowed growth is partially an effect of seasonality; Swedes simply consume less TV and video during the summer. Also, unlike with regular pay-TV subscriptions, people can cancel their streamed subscriptions temporarily while vacationing if they are not watching. But consumer interest in subscribed video streaming remains high and the market will keep growing this fall – we are nowhere near the peak yet,” says Marie Nilsson, CEO and founder of Mediavision.
During 2014, 100,000 households began subscribing to the standalone streaming service HBO Nordic. However, it still has a way to go to close the gap on market leader Netflix, which currently stands at 640 000 subscribing customers.
Although total subscriber numbers for the market as a whole only increased modestly over the last quarter, more than one million Swedish households now subscribe to a streaming service, translating into a 25% household penetration. In addition, an increasing share of the households now subscribe to two or more different services, all the while linear TV viewing is declining rapidly.
