In a bid to try and keep up with the runaway leaders in the video streaming game, Amazon is looking to seriously expand its investment in original programming for its Prime Instant Video service.
At the launch of this year's London Technology Week, Jay Marine, VP of Instant Video in Europe, told CNBC it was going to "double down" on the amount of money it spends on programming. It's going to "invest more to bring our customers worldwide more originals, more great TV series than they have never been able to see before," said Marine.
The last year saw Amazon invest $1.3 billion in its streaming service, producing award-winning shows like Transparent and even managed to woo nervous New York luminary Woody Allen into the fold to create bespoke TV.
Doubling that investment to nearly $3 billion sounds like one hell of an investment and with nigh-on 14 million subscribers to keep happy the numbers are looking pretty good...
...until you start looking at the numbers the big Netflix dogs are throwing around.
With over 60 million subscribers and a spend of around $10 billion in the past year you can see why Amazon needs to start upping its game, and why it needs to start making sure all those standard Amazon Prime subs are making use of its Instant Video service.
If those overall numbers aren't scary enough for Amazon folk a recently released estimate of US primetime streaming traffic by Sandvine pegged Netflix's share at 36.5% in peak evening viewing hours with Instant Prime Video batting at just 1.97%.
Looks like doubling down may not quite be enough...
via Home Media Magazine
