Considering the huge revenue opportunity from content, Idea Cellular has finally stepped up to launch its own movie and video streaming service 'Idea Movie Club' for their customers. Other operators are offering similar services from quite some time but latest move by Idea Cellular indicates that they don’t want to be limited to being a connectivity provider anymore.
Jio has built own app ecosystem which is much more mature than other operators including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone. The app - advantage is the another reason why people are getting attracted to Jio. In this situation, third largest operator Idea which was not serious about offering content through own apps is now taking another leap to build apps to tap data and content market.
To offer the content and movies Idea has partnered with Eros and can tie up with other content providers soon to add more content into their library.The new movie and video streaming app, 'Idea Movie Club' is still in beta and Idea customers can get access to the content at zero cost as of now. Later after launching the app, they would start charge for it. But following the other operators, Idea can offer these contents to premium data and postpaid customers.
Though globally top operators have already moved towards to becoming data content service provider, Indian operators are finally following the track to boost the data usage. However, it's in nascent stage as only Jio is offering variety of content over their network. But we believe, other operators would improve and develop their own apps to match them.
While voice revenues are falling and Jio's free voice calling strategy can burn the pockets of existing operators like Idea Cellular, so additional revenues through content might help to offset those losses and would play as a catalyst to boost the data revenues as well.
Dear readers, do you think other operators can match up with Jio to offer content through their own apps in coming months. Let us know through comments.
