Although Amazon Prime Video has been available to the Nordic households for over four years, it has not been able to compete with the other US based SVOD brands, nor with the local ones. However, in March, Amazon was relaunched with a new, local Swedish profile.
Following the launch of the local Swedish retail service Amazon.se last fall, the global giant has also relaunched its SVOD service Amazon Prime Video. As of March 1, the launch implied a “more local focus,” including the content itself as well as the user interface and more subtitles. It has also been hinted that local original productions might be in the pipeline.
According to Mediavision, since Prime Video’ launch back in 2016, growth has been pretty modest. This far, the Nordic approach is only fully materialized in Sweden where both the e-commerce site and the SVOD service are now (partially) locally adapted. The re-launch campaign “Streaming is believing” kicked-off in March and Mediavision can now said that, as of Q1 2021, Amazon Prime Video had a Swedish customer base of approximately 200 000 subscribing households, which is basically the same as in Q4 (before the Swedish launch).
The explanation is not unawareness of the brand or the service itself, considering that close to 70% of all Swedes (15-74-year-olds) state that they are familiar with the streaming service Amazon Prime Video (similar to other available services such as Telia Play and Comhem Play Plus).
The Swedish relaunch of Amazon Prime Video has similarities with the October 2020 launch of Amazon.se. After a strong hype before the launch of Amazon.se, the interest weakened, according to Google. This pinpoints the difficulty of evaluating a well-known international brand when entering a new market. So far, the legacy of Amazon as one of the largest retailers in the world has not mattered that much for Prime Video in Sweden. On the other hand, and by comparison, Disney+ likely had a stronger benefit from its well-known brand (and widely known content library). More than 500.000 households signed-up for the service shortly after its launch. The price level is similar, but Amazon has a library many times larger and broader than Disney’s.
In fact, looking at the current library, Amazon has the largest quantity of content in the Nordics. By being the lowest-priced SVOD service in the market, Amazon actually offers the lowest cost per unit, based on number of titles. A monthly subscription of Amazon in Sweden today amounts to 65 SEK. This means that Amazon offers 77 titles per SEK in Sweden. As a comparison, the Netflix library gives 53 titles per SEK, scoring second-best in cost per unit.
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