E-com giant Amazon to acquire some assets of streaming service MX Player

E-commerce and technology giant Amazon has signed an agreement to acquire some assets from the Times Internet-owned streaming platform MX Player.

“We are always looking for ways to introduce new products and services that help improve customers’ lives. We’re excited to continue to entertain India with the great local originals and exclusive content available across our Prime Video and miniTV services in India,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

However, the company said that the transaction is not yet complete.

The deal reportedly values MX Player at less than $100 million. This is a significant decrease from its $500 million valuation when it last raised $111 million in funding in 2019.

The deal is expected to give a boost to Amazon’s streaming service miniTV. Launched in May 2021, Amazon miniTV is a free, ad-supported video service, which is a part of Amazon’s shopping app. The service can be instantaneously accessed on-the-go anywhere and anytime without a paid subscription. It currently offers a vast selection of fresh, trendy, and immersive entertainment across multiple genres and can also be downloaded as an app from the Play Store.

Amazon also operates a subscription-based streaming service called Prime Video. It is bundled with its Prime subscription service.

The deal is taking place at a time when this year, India's top conglomerate Reliance Industries and Walt Disney announced the merger of their India TV and streaming media assets, creating an $8.5 billion entertainment platform.

Together, the Reliance-Disney merged entity will have 120 TV channels and two streaming platforms.

In January, nearly 243.5 million users — a 46.5 per cent market share — visited three streaming platforms, Disney’s Hotstar and Reliance’s JioCinema and JioTV, according to a Bloomberg report. Hotstar garnered over 114 million unique visitors for the month, while JioCinema and JioTV received more than 129 million visitors during the period, according to Comscore data.

The merger is expected to take on competitors such as Amazon’s Prime Video and miniTV, Netflix Inc, and local platforms such as MX Player and Zee Entertainment Ltd’s ZEE5.