The demand for digital entertainment has been on a constant rise in India as the wave of digitisation penetrates deep into the country. Revealing information regarding this growth in consumption of digital content in the country, the leading smartphone and Smart TV brand Xiaomi India has unveiled its annual trend report - ‘PatchWall Replay Report 2021’ which captures content consumption patterns on the 7+ million Xiaomi and Redmi Smart TVs. PatchWall was launched in 2018 with a content-first approach and is a Smart TV platform on all Xiaomi and Redmi Smart TVs that enables content discovery. The platform comes with 30+ international and Indian content partners, IMDB integration, features like Universal Search and Kids Mode customized for India as well as offers content from 15+ languages which completely redefines content consumption on a Smart TV.
Digital Content Trends in 2021
While the pandemic continued to impact our lives in 2021, a majority of the population relied on streaming and digital entertainment services while staying at their homes. This resulted in immense growth in the media streaming landscape and in 2021 alone PatchWall witnessed over 2000 crore interactions across different categories such as movies, TV shows, music, kid’s entertainment and more.
Talking about the release of the report, Mr Eshwar Nilakantan, Category Lead said in a statement that Xiaomi India has transformed the Indian Smart TV market as it offers products and services that are a combination of innovative features and the best specs. He talked about the expansion of the company and how during the times of pandemic, more and more people resorted to PatchWall to discover new and exciting content.
According to the PatchWall Replay Report 2021, there was a strong 300% increase in households streaming online with news Channels like Aaj Tak, India TV, Sun News, and Zee News being the most-watched channels. With 2021 being the year of the Olympics, a huge number of users tuned in to stream the event. The report informs that about 18.49 Lakh active TV households watched Neeraj Chopra winning the gold at Olympics. In addition to this, India vs Pakistan match recorded the maximum number of active TV sets at once, with the 22.71 lakhs households tuning in.
Apart from sports, there was a huge surge in the number of users tuning in for high-definition content. 4K content was in huge demand in 2021, with 1.38 crore clicks being recorded for 4K content on PatchWall. Additionally, more than 2 lakh users used Universal Search daily to discover movies and newer shows. The demand for digital content in India also diversified in 2021 with 39% of households watching content in a non-native language. PatchWall Replay Report 2021 also shows how the OTT space witnessed a major boom in 2021 with people looking for fresh and rejuvenating content across platforms.
