Amazon India has recently finalized the acquisition of MX Player’s assets, including its app, and has merged it with its AVOD platform Amazon miniTV to create a new free streaming service called Amazon MX Player. This new platform boasts a user base of over 250 million unique users in India, as reported by Amazon.
Amazon MX Player offers a variety of original shows such as “Aashram,” “Dharavi Bank,” and “Campus Diaries,” along with a selection of Korean, Mandarin, and Turkish shows dubbed in local languages. Users can access the service through mobile apps, Amazon’s shopping app, Prime Video, Fire TV, and connected TVs.
MX Player originally started as a cross-platform media player developed by South Korea’s J2 Interactive. In 2018, Times Internet acquired a controlling stake in MX Player for $140 million and transformed it into a video streaming platform. The recent deal with Amazon signifies a strategic move for both companies, leveraging MX Player’s extensive reach with Amazon’s advertising technology to deliver targeted advertising to a large and engaged audience across India.
Girish Prabhu, head of Amazon Advertising India, expressed excitement about the partnership, stating that it would enable brands to reach a vast audience effectively. Karan Bedi, the former Eros Now COO and now head of the new Amazon MX Player platform, emphasized that the merger would accelerate the delivery of high-quality entertainment and streaming experiences to users while keeping the service free.
In a separate development, Everyone TV, the organization behind the UK free streaming platform Freely, has teamed up with Amazon Fire TV. This collaboration will integrate Freely into Amazon Fire TV smart TVs and other Fire TV OS-enabled sets later this year. Freely, which debuted in April 2024, offers free live and on-demand content from popular UK channels such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 without the need for a dish or aerial. The platform will be accessible on Amazon’s Fire TV 2-Series and 4-Series, as well as select TCL and Panasonic models featuring Fire TV OS.
This partnership expands Freely’s reach, complementing its existing availability on Hisense, Bush, Toshiba, and Panasonic TVs with TiVo OS. With more smart TV and OS providers expected to join in the future, Freely aims to become a prominent player in the UK streaming market.
Overall, these collaborations highlight the growing synergy between streaming platforms and technology companies, paving the way for enhanced entertainment experiences for users worldwide.
