Netflix is finally ready to introduce the $3.99 or Ksh400 monthly mobile-only plan in Kenya, Nigeria South Africa and other sub-Saharan African countries.
According to a Netflix spokesman who spoke to South Africa’s News24, Netflix is launching the package to be a direct competition to MultiChoice’s Showmax which offers such low packages and Royal Media’s Viusasa which is struggling to make an impact but still offers some competition to Netflix in the local content scenario.
The new package is a result of the 2020 test of two mobile-only plans by Netflix In 2020 Netflix tested two mobile-only plans in Sub-Saharan Africa countries to see whether users would like these plans. 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 new package will be available together with the usual Basic, Standard and Premium bouquets. The downside to the new package is that it will only be available in Standard Definition (SD) of 520p and will only be accessed on one device at a time per account.
However, the content to access will be the same as those offered on other plans and users will be able to have up to 5 different profiles per account.
Netflix’s mobile plan will cost NGN1200 in Nigeria, KES300 in Kenya and $3.99 in other African countries.
Netflix also announced the launch of its new “Play Partial Download” feature, which allow users Android (v.7.64+) platform to start playing a movie or episode of a series before it has completed downloading.
Netflix will be testing this feature on iOS in the coming months. 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.
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