The three big players are targeting Vietnam to provide on-demand movies, TV game show services and live streaming of sports tournaments on social networks. With their diverse services and powerful technology, Vietnam’s OTT TVs have been warned they would be uncompetitive in terms of content copyright and would lose audience to digital content service providers. 

NetFlix has been trying to step by step penetrate the domestic market for the last three years, and they have gained initial achievements, though its service fee is higher than domestic VOD service providers. 

Buu Dien newspaper quoted its source as reporting that NetFlix has attracted about 300,000 subscribers. An abundance of copyrighted films with subtitles in Vietnamese no ads, and high image quality are its great advantages.

An analyst commented that it is difficult for Netflix to lure Vietnamese subscribers because of the high fee, but most subscribers are loyal. 

While their rivals are all powerful and have been upgrading to satisfy Vietnamese customers, domestic content producers are still finding their way.

An analyst said there are four groups of OTT TV players in Vietnam.

The first one, comprising K+, SCTV and VTV, well-known TV operators that shifted to OTT TV, use internet as the transmission platform instead of cable and satellite.

The second group includes mobile network operators such as Viettel, VTC and MobiFone, which use content produced by themselves or other TV channels. 

The third group are purely content producers such as Cat Tien Sa and BHD, ones which simply make content but do not have infrastructure but now want to build up apps of their own.

And the last group provides platform service such as FPT Play, Zing TV, Clip TV and VNPT Media.

At present, OTT apps in Vietnam mostly serve audiences for free. However, television stations and media firms tend to transmit entertainment content to audience through OTT apps.

More and more apps to watch TV have come out recently, including VTVgo, VTVcab On, Onme, FPTPlay, ClipTV, VTV Giai tri and VTC Now, which broadcast Vietnamese and international TV channels, sports tournaments, music events, dramas and movies.

SCTV, VTVcab, K+ and VTC all have stated they will provide copyrighted content on OTT TV. However, even the most powerful players still cannot ‘give a push’ to OTT TV. The content shown on OTT TV is mostly television content, not specifically designed for OTT.

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