ASEAN content and consumer company Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad (Astro) is targeting millennials to grow its business in the Philippines.
Steve Santos, country manager for Astro’s Tribe over-the-top (OTT) platform, told the BusinessMirror that target was already there when the company started operations in the Philippines in December last year.
“It was the way to go for us because Tribe has a lot of Korean content,” Santos said in an interview on May 19.
Santos added app’s combination of linear and on-demand type of programming suits well with the local audience.
“Tribe users in the Philippines really love the app’s linear experience, specifically the Korean entertainment channels like K-PLUS, KBS and TvN as they can catch the latest K-drama and K-pop shows as these air in Korea,” Santos said. “If they miss an episode, they can always catch-up via our video-on-demand library.”
“The funny thing is we knew that we have a lot of Korean content for the Philippine market. We never thought it would be a super hit,” Santos added. “We knew that when we enter the market, Korean content would be a hit among the local users. But we never knew that this would be crazy.”
He said they are targeting one million would download the app this year.
“So far we’re on track. We are also growing the active user base, which is roughly 40 percent of that.”
Astro’s bullishness came after the International Data Corp. (IDC) forecast that OTT linear TV subscriber growth will start by 2018 to drive traditional pay TV overhaul via cloud migration.