Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) announced that it will offer a new streaming service to current TV and internet subscribers. The service, called Xfinity Streampix, will have a library of 75,000 television shows and movies. It may be the best product in the market, but it will compete with several others that are similar enough that differentiation from the others is hard.
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is still the leader in the streaming video business, despite recently stumbles. It has more than 20 million subscribers. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) offer similar products. Kiosk firm Redbox bought the old Blockbuster Express from NCR (NYSE: NCR) and set a video on demand joint venture with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) to compete with Netflix. The Redbox brand is bolstered by it 25,000 rental locations.
The streaming VOD business has not knocked the set-top box from on top of most televisions. Cable TV, which added VOD several years ago, still holds the high ground along with improved satellite TV. AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon have tried to crowd into the living room with fiber to the home products that are bundled with superfast broadband to make them more attractive,.
And the streaming business is no longer isolated to the home. Many streaming products work on PCs. More challenging to the entire streaming industry is that people are willing to watch video on smartphones, despite the tiny size of their screens.
Comcast faces more than Netflix as competition. VOD and video streaming now have a small army of competition, and it is hard for any one of them to show that it has a product substantially better than all the others.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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