Disney+ was the latest premium streaming service to attack Southeast Asia, launching in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in 2021. Subscription video streaming still has room to grow in the region, where free or freemium models like YouTube and TikTok reign supreme when it comes to video viewing. As data from Media Partners Asia shows, only ten percent of the time spent watching video in Southeast Asia was on premium platforms in Q3 of 2021.
One of the challenges for the big name subscription services is the different content Asian audiences like to watch. Just over a third of the content watched in Southeast Asia was North American or European, while the rest was split between videos out of different local markets. Korean was the most popular, followed by content out of the viewers home country, Japanese content and Chinese content.
Disney+ has already announced the addition of licensed Korean and Japanese titles, which it hopes will boost engagement. The service also launched in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan in November.
