Amazon has announced a significant move by acquiring select assets from MX Player, a video streaming platform owned by Times Internet. This acquisition will merge the MX Player app with Amazon's ad-supported service, miniTV, resulting in the creation of Amazon MX Player.
Reports indicate that discussions to acquire MX Player resumed on March 29, nearly a year after initial negotiations fell through. Amazon previously launched miniTV in May 2021 to target audiences in smaller towns, making it accessible through the Amazon shopping app for both Android and iPhone users. This merger is expected to strengthen Amazon’s advertising video-on-demand (AVoD) business.
Girish Prabhu, head of Amazon Advertising India, said, “It’s about enabling all brands, not just the ones selling on Amazon, to reach and deliver relevant advertising to a very large and engaged base across India. It’s about directly measuring outcomes from the very top of the funnel to the very bottom.”
Amazon miniTV is already known for original series like Yeh Meri Family, Hustlers, and Dehati Ladke. The company plans to continue investing in original content and popular shows to enhance advertiser relationships with viewers.
MX Player originally began as a media player for downloaded videos, developed by a South Korean company. Times Internet acquired it in 2018 for ₹1,000 crore (approximately $140 million) to enter the video streaming market after previous attempts, including BoxTV. MX Player was later relaunched as an ad-supported streaming app.
Despite raising around $111 million in funding from Tencent, MX Player struggled to generate sufficient revenue for expansion, leading Times Internet to sell off several of its ventures, including the short-video platform MX Takatak to ShareChat.
Karan Bedi, head of Amazon MX Player, stated, “We will offer high-quality entertainment and streaming experiences faster than we could have done independently while continuing to keep the service free. This merger will mean great things for our viewers, advertisers, and content partners and will let us bring MX Player to even more people in India.”
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