Amazon Launches a Free Streaming Service Called MiniTV

Amazon has launched a free video streaming service called MiniTV in India. The service won’t require a separate download as it can be accessed from within the Amazon shopping app itself.

As Tech Crunch reports, Amazon claims that its subscription-based streaming platform, Prime Video, helps drive sales to its shopping app. With MiniTV, users can access free videos and shows in the shopping app, so Amazon could be hoping for a similar outcome from it as well.

Importantly, Amazon already has another free video streaming service called IMDb TV, but as of now it’s only available to customers in the US. Similarly, MiniTV is only available to customers in India with no information about future expansion into other nations.

MiniTV’s content will largely focus on “web-series, comedy shows, and content around tech news, food, beauty, fashion.” Most of MiniTV’s catalog consists of old shows that were originally released on other platforms such as YouTube. MiniTV also contains shows produced by TVF and Pocket Aces that are two of the biggest web studios in India.

Amazon has involved a lot of big comedians from India in order to give MiniTV a boost.

Since MiniTV is ad-supported, Amazon could use it to lead users directly to its own products. The Amazon Shopping integration will make the process easier for users as well. It’s already been more than two years since Amazon began “integrating reviews and other web clippings from media houses” in its shopping app in India.

Currently, MiniTV is only available in the Amazon Shopping Android app in India with an iOS and mobile web launch in the works.

Amazon Seeks to Dominate the Video Streaming Space in India

Amazon’s primary rival in India, Flipkart, already rolled out a video streaming service within its app back in 2019. In fact, other top web companies including PayTM and Zomato have also contemplated integrating a video service in their apps.

The company has also been aggressively expanding Prime Video offerings in India with the introduction of new subscription tiers. Recently, Amazon partnered with telecom service provider Airtel to offer a single-user, mobile-only, standard definition (SD), monthly Prime Video subscription for $1.22.

So far Amazon is still ahead of Netflix when it comes to market share in India. According to TechCrunch, as of April, Prime Video has over 60 million monthly active users compared to Netflix’ 40 million.

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