Xiaomi challenges Netflix and Amazon Prime with its own streaming services

Very soon, Xiaomi will kickstart their streaming services in India, and this means, Xiaomi will be directly positioned against the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hotstar.

Xiaomi has some major plans to use content as a monetization platform, and the first step will be an online video streaming service, just like what Netflix and Prime do.

Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain said that the company is looking to earn revenue from the streaming of movies and music, digital payments and wallets, and is willing to invest a ‘significant portion’ of the recent investment of Rs 3,500 crore for the same, according to a report by The Economic Times. Xiaomi will launch their own TV shows, exclusive web series, and home-made movies.

“Xiaomi globally made less than 1 percent profit margin from hardware or device sales in 2018, and we have stated that will never make more than 5 percent profit margin on hardware. It is the internet services that will make money for us,” Jain told the publication. He also said, “Designing and selling hardware is only half the job for us. The remaining half of the job is to engage with customers and sell internet services to grow fast.” Further, the company will apparently be monetizing streaming content from Mi Music and Mi Video.

They have recently started a paid service for their music access as well, and things will pick up soon. Besides these Mi-Pay, it’s online and mobile payment app, has already been launched in India, and a major marketing campaign is about to be unleashed to promote that.

This way, Xiaomi will compete against Paytm, PhonePe for capturing the digital payments market; will fight with Spotify, Youtube, and Gaana for online music; battle Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime for online streaming of videos, and even compete against the likes of Dropbox for online file storage and transfer.