[Aju News DB]
SEOUL -- In an effort to capture South Korea's over-the-top online video streaming market estimated to reach two trillion won ($1.5 billion), the country's biggest telecom operator KT and entertainment giant CJ ENM have forged a partnership to merge their video streaming platforms.
South Korea's over-the-top video streaming market was spearheaded by Netflix, the world's most popular OTT service in 2016. Other local platforms have been locked in pursuit of the American video streaming giant to form a one trillion won market in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of about 28 percent.
According to market data analyst Consumer Insight, the top player in South Korea's OTT market in 2021 was Netflix with a market share of about 60 percent. YouTube Premium was the second-most popular OTT service with a market share of about 25 percent. The third-most popular service was CJ ENM's Tving with about 18 percent. Seezn, operated by KT, has about eight percent market share.
KT said that the company has partnered with CJ ENM to merge Seezn and Tving to boost their OTT services' competitiveness in the domestic market. The merge will be completed in the second half of 2022.
"We decided to merge our services to quickly gain competitiveness in the domestic market which has become the competing grounds for global OTT services and the source of key content," KT's Group Transformation Division head Kim Kyung-rim said in a statement on July 14. The telecom company said that it will focus on content media businesses based on its value chain.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.
![[MWC 24] KT partners with Amazon to co-develop generative AI and mobile services for enterprises](https://image.ajunews.com/content/image/2024/02/29/20240229160755568058.jpg)
