Netflix recently announced some BIG news! They are bringing their mobile only plans to Africa – South Africa to be exact. The two new plans are most probably meant to acquire new subscribers for the video streaming service.
The cheapest Netflix plan (Netflix Mobile) will now cost R39 per month. This is less than the previous entry package priced at R99 and supports 1 single stream, support for tablets and smartphones and upto 480p resolution. No HD but no complaints since the price is so low.
Netflix Mobile+ is priced at R59 and in addition to all the features available on Netflix Mobile you can also stream the content on your laptop/desktop. That probably won’t be a great experience given the resolution and the size of laptop and desktop displays.
Why is this a big deal?
The most obvious reason is simply that Netflix’s huge content library will now be available to a lot more people. Last year, Netflix brought the same package to India to test out the appetite for such a service for low-income consumers. According to Netflix officials, the mobile packages were a hit in India and the fact that they are rolling it out to more markets means Netflix thinks it will be a hit in these markets as well.
It’s actually performing better than we tested. We’ll look at testing that in other markets, too, because we think there are other markets which have similar conditions that make it likely that, that’s going to be successful for us there as well.