Emergence and future of Over-the-top (OTT) video services in India
Published: 2022-02-14 08:52:54

Over-the-Top (OTT) video platforms, once considered a luxury is today a commodity. In India, there is an increasingly growing number of consumers adapting to it. While Indian streaming services like Hotstar and Jio Cinema has gained a stronger foothold, global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime have steadily grown their market share in India. This paper explores the emergence, advantage, and future of streaming service in India through an analytical research. We also present the various OTT services, their growth factors, technology background, audience characteristics, content, censorship and future developments expected in the industry. Keywords: OTT, services, future , network, policy, competition, regulation, market, telecommunications, internet.

COVID-19 is an unprecedented global pandemic which has changed the way audience consume media. An undeniable trend surfaced in this period– adoption of OTTs. There are many reports which point to the growing market and consumer appetite for content of choice available on OTT platforms. OTTs offer a never before consumer advantage– choice of content, ease of access, choice of device / mediums (hand phone, laptop, tablet or TV screen). Gone are the days when family members fought for screen time of choice on family’s singular home device i.e. TV. With this study, the researchers studied the evolution of OTT space in India and reviewed the dynamic OTT space – evaluate some firsts like big banner movie releases on platforms like Amazon and Netflix, return of old content like Mythological programmes from the DD era on Hotstar etc. To complete the study, it was imperative to evaluate the impact of growing content consumption on psychographics across generations (children, adults and elderlies) as there is limited censorship in the OTT space. With this background, the researchers workedon the objectives and tried to evaluate the role played by the pandemic in evolving OTT media consumption trends; a qualitative mapping of increase in OTT adoption – Pre and Post COVID 19 in India; study underlying trends around increasing consumer appetite for the medium and analyse psychographic impact on children, adults and elderlies – listing pros and cons for freely available content with minimal censorship. The researchers adopteda combined qualitative and quantitative approach to extrapolate the data. A survey was also conducted to do audience mapping and analysis.In addition to primary data, content from news articles, industry research reports, international journals for accumulation of key trends were analysed.

Existingliterature on the OTT space The literature on the topic remains somewhat limited and skewed, despite the drastic changes that OTT services have introduced to the media and entertainment industry. In terms of several threads, common research themes so far can be summarised. First, several case studies illustrate the development of OTT services. Second, it is popular to address the viral effect of OTT services on the conventional media industry. The competitive dynamics between OTT and conventional pay TV platforms was hypothesised through niche research. The results shed light on the effect of established systems by explaining how OTT systems overlap or are competitively superior to existing services15-16 Built a TechnologyPolicy-Consumer (TPC) model and examined how the introduction of OTT services has impacted the technology / industry, public policy, and consumer / culture aspects of the US media industries. Analyses of OTT services that revolutionise conventional stages of development, delivery and consumption often offer an important viewpoint on understanding the latest features and future developments in the media industry caused by OTT services. 17 Third, user motivations for adopting OTT services have been investigated by a number of scholars18 Comparing TV consumption motivations, Yi-Ning Katherine Chen (2016)19 - examine how OTT services can serve as a substitute for TV in Taiwan. Finally, as different businesses continue to broaden their offerings to the online video streaming market, net neutrality laws or recommendations about how to regulate the emerging industry are discussed. Therefore, what is evident from literature available domestically and internationally is the fact the OTT has revolutionised the way audience consumer content and this has impacted not only the media and entertainment industry but the entire eco-system, including content, creativity, formats, regulations, telecommunications, device market including

software and hardware and last but not the least, one of the most crucial peg of the puzzle, the internet providers. Factors influencing adoption of OTT TV Researchers have reviewed consumer behaviour in certain studies and reviewed theories to understand and predict consumer behaviour with regards to OTT adoption. Growing technology adoption and internet penetration have been cited as clear benefits for OTT growth in past decade internationally. Numerous authors have used various models including - Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), (Davis, 1989), Theory of Panned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991), Diffusion of Innovation (DOI), (Roger, 1995), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to review and understand the acceptance of a new technology by customers and correlate it with adoption of OTT media including TV, voice, interactive and others.20 With respect to OTT platform, TAM is used mainly by various authors like Cha, 2013; Cha and ChanOlmsted, 2012. In which two major variables i.e. perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have been identified as crucial factors which predicts users’ adoption of new technology.21 Based on these key theories22 of technology adoption and acceptance, a research was done - to study the impact of key elements including - Apparent Ease of Use, Apparent Usefulness, Apparent Enjoyment, Role of Customisation, Compatibility, Content Quality and User Interface on OTT adoption (See Fig I - Factors impacting acceptance of new technology). It was found that four variables were determined, i.e. Customization, user experience, perceived pleasure and quality of content have had an important and positive effect on users' attitudes toward OTT media adoption. Content quality has been shown to have the greatest effect on developing a positive attitude towards embracing the OTT media platform. This implies that a very important aspect is the quality of content delivered on the OTT media site. Also, from the previous researches, it has been found that people switch from Traditional media to OTT media due to the good content quality provided in OTT media.