Nigeria’s video-on-demand (VoD) service, iROKOtv plans to terminate its desktop services for viewers in Africa, and focus on mobile-only experience.
iROKOtv through its Founder, Jason Njoku, earlier this week made the announcement that they will be discontinuing web services across Africa starting July 2015 going forward. Njoku also added that iROKOtv will also terminate their streaming services in Africa. The company wants to focus only on discovery and download where viewers can watch offline. The move has largely been attributed to the poor 3G network infrastructure that has made video streaming services on the continent difficult.
Njoku in a statement said: “In Africa, we will essentially retire the .com. The several thousand existing African subscribers will have continued access to the website. New users will be able to see the desktop reality. Discovery and download to watch offline will be our new experience, 3G infrastructure really struggles to capture the customer experience.”
The new move will only affect new iROKOtv viewers in Africa while the existing viewers will continue having access to the website.
“Globally, where 85% of our revenues and subscribers lay, will remain untouched as streaming largely works just fine there. In Africa, we will essentially retire the .com. The several thousand existing African subscribers will have continued access to the website. New users will be unable to see the desktop reality.
Njoku further expressed his view on the development of Internet TV company in Nigeria. Arguing that the company that would thrive if Nigerian internet goes mobile will be the one that also goes mobile.
“It needs to embrace and build for that apparently simple (yet incredibly complicated) reality – from content, to pricing, to access, to product development, to distribution, to everything. It all needs to be rethought, imagined, and the operating system required for this reality is Android. Pure and simple,” Njoku further added.