Located on the area of the Belt and Road Initiative, MENA (Middle Eastern & Northern Africa) market has more and more cooperation with China. TCL Electronics Holdings Limited, one of the leading players in the global TV industry with its shipment ranked No.2 in the global TV markets in 2019, announced an official partnership with Middle East Broadcasting Center – MBC Group.
Through the cooperation, Shahid, a streaming giant under MBC Group, is now readily accessible to all TCL Android TVs users via its app in MENA market.
As the most popular brand in MENA, Shahid possesses the largest Arabic-language movies sources, and its premium library features a whole host of exclusive Arabic-language and international content, as well as live channels. Thanks to the cooperation, TCL has taken the first important step into MENA content integration by becoming one of the first TV companies to feature Shahid as regular programming on its Android smart TVs. Users across MENA purchasing a new TCL Android TV of select models in select markets will receive a free subscription to Shahid VIP ranged from three months to a full year, depending on which TCL Android TV model purchased.
According to the report of MENA OTT TV and Video Forecast, released by IHS Markit, the compound annual growth rate on subscription-video services is expected to be 35% between the year of 2016 and 2021 with rapid growth, even its market scale is rather small. In the meanwhile, based on expectations of Digital TV Research, another market research company, the revenue of SVOD (Subscription Video-on-Demand) will more than tripled in the region during the period from 2018 to 2024. In addition, it is estimated that the revenue of SVOD in MENA in 2024 will reach to US$2.13 billion, increased US$1.51 billion compared to that of in 2018. Beyond that, the total amount of subscriptions will achieve 11.87 million across 13 Arabic countries in MENA as of 2024, which will be almost three times compared to 4.13 million by the end of 2018. The research of Capital Nuts shows that the population of people under the age of 25 accounts for nearly 70% of the population in the region with high Internet penetration rate. Among which, six nations near Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have 50 million people with high ARPU, which indicates of their great potential on Internet business. The research reports above also reveals that the industry is confident in the prospect of SVOD in the region. At this moment, TCL Electronics has cooperated with Shahid, a streaming giant in the region, demonstrating the Company’s determination to develop local markets and further expand its overseas internet business.
Kevin Wang, CEO of TCL Electronics, commented: “Together with MBC Group, we are thrilled to provide first-class home theater experience to our customers. We hope to widely share our joy of having Shahid’s exclusive content in TCL Android TV and providing richer contents to our customers. We have strong faith that, integration of premium contents in high quality TVs will further strengthen TCL’s leading position in the global consumer electronics industry.”
According to GfK’s data, TCL TVs has performed well in market share in terms of sales volume in MENA markets. In the first quarter of 2020, the market share of TCL TVs ranked the top 3 in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and No.6 in UAE. The Company expects that the cooperation will further promote local business.
Lastly, the Company’s new website has already launched, please visit http://electronics.tcl.com for more information.
