by Thinus Ferreira
After several months of testing it for Africa, Netflix is today introducing its cheaper R49 per month mobile-only plan in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and other sub-Saharan African countries.
Netflix's R49 mobile-only plan in South Africa, and $3.99 for sub-Saharan Africa, will now compete against MultiChoice's Showmax that has a R39 per month mobile-only plan for South Africa that costs $2.99 in the rest of Africa.
In 2020 Netflix tested two mobile-only plans in Africa as well as other countries to see whether users would like these plans and on Tuesday the company said that the video streaming service is officially making these available to users in South Africa and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
Netflix's mobile-only plan will sit alongside its other three Netflix plans of basic, standard and premium. The Netflix mobile plan can be accessed on a tablet or a smartphone and allows one stream in standard definition (SD) (520p).
It means that only one device can plan it at one time. Consumers who subscribe to the mobile plan will have the same access to the entire Netflix catalogue available in Africa and 5 different profiles can be created on the mobile plan.
Netflix's mobile plan will cost NGN1200 in Nigeria, KES300 in Kenya and $3.99 in other African countries.
Play partial download
On Tuesday Netflix is also launching its new "Play Partial Download" feature, allowing users with Android phones and tablets (v.7.64+) to start the playback of a title or episode before it has completed downloading.
Netflix previously tested this feature in July of 2020 and found that 35% of new members and 24% of existing members played a partial
download at least once.
"While there were no changes in
downloading behaviour or overall streaming, we're focused on what we can do
today to make it even easier to watch that nearly downloaded episode of
your favourite show or a movie for those members who have unreliable WiFi," Netflix says.
"By
enabling this feature, we're hoping to help our members save time as customers
have pivoted to using offline viewing."
Keela Robison, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, says "We always want to make it easier
for members to access their favourite series or movies regardless of language,
device, connectivity, or location. So partial downloading is now available on
Android phones and tablets, and we’ll begin testing on iOS in the coming
months".
