Canadian iPad users can now bring a little British charm into their very own homes. BBC just signed a deal with Apple for an app that allows users to watch limited streaming for no charge (or if they pay $8.99/month they can watch over 1,500 hours of on-demand videos).
There’s been some speculation as to whether or not this new app will be in competition with the Netflix app. However, the BBC executive vice president put the rumors to rest saying, “Netflix is a very different type of service, it is very broad. It offers tens of thousands of titles across several genres, whereas [iPlayer] is a branded service where we aggregate a very deep type of content; TV content as opposed to film. Netflix is a different experience, so I’m not really concerned as there isn’t a particularly large demographic overlap.”
In terms of future plans, the BBC would like to one day expand from just the iPlayer to the iPhone as well. Although sticking with iPlayer (and eventually iPhone) is a fairly small market, executives at BBC believe that this will not be the case for long. Over half the tablet users in Canada use iPad (projected to be about 1 million by the end of the year). A rep from BBC was quoted on this subject saying, “It is still early days in terms of the number of people who actually own a media tablet today,” she said, noting dropping prices as low as $200 is expanding Canada’s addressable tablet market. “That becomes increasingly relevant when someone like the BBC launches an app.”
Kind of exciting to see the new apps that are becoming available to smartphone and tablet users, no?
http://business.financialpost.com/2011/12/01/bbc-launches-iplayer-for-ipad-in-canada/
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