New study says streaming will replace traditional TV

"Traditional television is not relevant for me": In a recent Simon-Kucher survey, well over 60% of streaming-savvy respondents in the majority of participating countries agreed with this statement. Australia, France and Germany brought up the rear with 46, 57 and 58 percent respectively; in the latter, however, the use of freely available content from traditional TV channels (e.g. via media libraries) is comparatively high at over 70 percent. "More and more people are turning away from linear television," says Lisa Jäger, media expert and partner at Simon-Kucher. "But what are they doing instead? As the answer to this has a major impact on the advertising market, we took a close look at this in our study."

More and more people are using video streaming instead of traditional television: more than 1.02 billion worldwide last year, according to Statista. This figure is expected to rise to 1.24 billion by 2023. This is also reflected in the survey - on average across countries, almost 75% of streaming-savvy respondents agreed with the statement that streaming is replacing traditional television in their country. Singapore (95%), Mexico (88%) and the USA (84%) are particularly consistent in this regard. "Streaming services are particularly popular in countries with little or no attractive public TV offerings," says Jäger. "As users across all countries reject advertisements, they prefer to use video streaming instead of private, ad-financed TV channels."

According to the study, the quality of the content offered was more important than the price when choosing a streaming service in all participating countries. All countries except one also stated that they would be happy to pay a higher monthly price for their streaming subscription if there were no commercial breaks. The approval rates for free streaming with commercials were below 15 percent in all countries.

But what can we expect from the entry of another strong competitor like Apple into the market? Users are quite positive about the new offering: When asked whether they could imagine subscribing to Apple TV+, between 25 and 45 percent answered "yes" and 40 to 57 percent "maybe" in eight out of nine countries. Only Mexico falls out of the picture here, with a clear 69% saying yes and 23% saying maybe. There was also general agreement that a monthly price of around ten euros for the service was considered fair by many users; only in the Latin American countries was the willingness to pay slightly lower.

For competitors such as Netflix or Amazon, this is not such threatening news: In seven out of nine countries, most participants stated that they would use Apple TV+ in addition to their existing subscriptions. In Latin American countries in particular, between 46 and even 63 percent of respondents said they would subscribe to the Apple offering in addition to their existing services. In three quarters of the countries, less than ten percent would cancel all existing subscriptions because of the Apple offer.

"This is good news for the industry, although the competitive pressure between different streaming providers in Europe and the USA, for example, is much stronger. Companies have to continually impress with high-quality content in order to attract and retain customers," says Jäger. "It will also be exciting when another player enters the market this fall with Disney's streaming service Disney+. Although the Disney+ offering is likely to be aimed at a different audience than the typical Netflix customer in terms of content, it cannot be ruled out that there will be cut-throat competition."