Users get more control over purchase decision with HOOQ

Chief executive officer Peter Bithos said HOOQ, which is headquartered in Singapore, provided premium VOD service in the Thai market, as well as in the Philippines, India and Indonesia. 
The service, which was built in Asia for Asia, is taking on a mobile-first user experience to cater to the voracious demands of mobile users, he said, adding that using the new hybrid model now allows customers to sample a premium service at no cost. 
Pilot episodes of all TV series will now be free for all registered users, even after their free-trial period has ended. 
Customers can now catch pilot episodes from “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”, “Supergirl”, “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD” and “Once Upon a Time” whenever they hit the service, with the extended sampling giving them the power to decide if they would like to continue to watch the rest of series before they pay for the subscription, he said.
“We are very excited to introduce this hybrid model, as it gives customers more control over their purchase decision. This new hybrid model is a result of what we have learnt over the past year after studying usage patterns and speaking to numerous customers and understanding what they want in a video-on-demand service. 
“We believe this will be a win-win strategy for both our customers and our business, as it allows the customer to try the service and the content before they decide to purchase. At the same time, we have the opportunity to re-engage customers whenever we introduce our latest titles, outside of their free-trial period” the CEO said.
Bithos added that the key driver of any VOD service was premium content. HOOQ on mobile devices is designed with the habits of social and digital natives in mind, and this new mobile-first release boasts a brand-new, real-time content feed and personalised recommendation engine that makes discovering new favourites easy to access, he explained. 
Additionally, there is an improved search engine, wish-lists for future viewing and optimised content delivery for significantly faster app-start and streaming-start times.
The new app was developed by HOOQ’s in-house team over nearly nine months and is backboned by a new back-end framework focused on a faster and higher-quality streaming experience for the customer, he said.
In addition to the current support of iOS, Android, Web, Chromecast and Android Set-top Box, HOOQ will be available on Airplay and mobile Web as part of this launch, he added. 
“We know that our customers are mostly enjoying HOOQ on their mobile devices, so it was a natural decision that we enhanced the entire HOOQ platform to give our customers a best-in-class mobile-first experience,” said Kulpong Bunnag, country manager of HOOQ Thailand. 
Kulpong said HOOQ had enhanced its growing reputation by providing a new ad-free feature, Freemium, which was launched earlier this month. The user can also watch Freemium-related hit series for free, the country manager said, adding that this is the turning point for the VOD market. HOOQ, which provides more than 10,000 titles on the service, is expected to grow by 1 million subscribers each year on average over the next three years. 
It currently operates in the Philippines, Thailand, India and Indonesia, with a population footprint of over 1.6 billion people.
Bithos said the company next planned to provide its services in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam by the year’s end.
There are now an estimated 5 million to 10 million paid VOD users in the overall market in Thailand.