The Home Video and OTT Video Forecast – Global report analysed major services such as the two aforementioned plus the likes of Hotstar, IVI.ru, Hulu, Viu and iFlix Note. It calculated that the number of homes paying for subscriptions to streaming video services has now broken through the 250 million mark and predicts that the number of homes paying for subscriptions to streaming video services will reach nearly 300 million by the end of 2018 and more than 450 million by 2022.

Such strong uptake was also reflected in the value of the market with the average monthly household spending on streaming video services increasing 5% annually at the end of 2017 to $9.46. The total number of streaming video subscriptions reached 345 million by the end of 2017, with households paying for streaming video services used on average 1.39 services.

The US has the highest penetration of streaming video services, with 59% of households using at least one service at the end of 2017, followed by its northern neighbour Canada eight percentage points behind. Norway led the Nordic block of countries on 46%, with Sweden a point behind and Finland on 44%. Australia came in at 36%, South Korea 35% and the UK 34%.

Commenting on the results found in the Home Video and OTT Video Forecast – Global report Michael Goodman, director, TV and media strategies at Strategy Analytics said: “Streaming video is rapidly becoming a normal part of people’s entertainment options. Usage is already at around half of households in the most mature markets and is likely to reach those levels in many other countries in the near future. Clearly market leaders like Netflix will benefit from this trend, but there are also major opportunities for media companies which currently focus on more traditional pay-TV and content development business models.”