Netflix’s audience numbers in Korea have slid for the third consecutive month, dropping to 8.08 million monthly active users in April from 8.24 million in March amid rising domestic competition and the impact of slower content refresh rates because of Covid-19 production delays.

Data from research agency Nielsen Koreanclick puts Netflix’s monthly active users at 8.99 million in January this year.

Year on year though, the streamer’s Korean users are still up dramatically, from 6.37 million in May 2020 and 2.52 million the previous year, and Netflix remains the country’s top streaming service.

Market insiders point to the potential of further downward pressure on Netflix's numbers from Disney+, which is expected to roll out in Korea this year. Disney is known to have spent significantly on tentpole Korean titles for its new streaming service.

Domestic streamers Wavve and Tving have, meanwhile, stepped up efforts to counter Netflix’s dominance in Korea with hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for original content investment over the next few years.

CJ ENM's Tving, which has a partnership with JTBC and internet giant Naver, rolled out aggressive growth plans in early 2021, including investing US$363 million in original content over the next three years.

Tving’s monthly active users were up 59% to 2.41 million in 2020 compared to the previous year. The platform dropped to 2.93 monthly active users in April from 3.12 million in January 2021.

Wavve – a joint venture of SK Telecom, KBS, MBC, SBS – plans to invest KRW1 trillion in original content by 2025.

Wavve was up 22% to 3.44 million monthly active users in 2020, according to Nielsen Korea. This was up to 3.7 million in April 2021.

Earlier this month, Nielsen Korea tracked an increase of more than 64% in Netflix’s unique users from January to November 2020 putting it second only to YouTube.

In April, Netflix said it had increased paid memberships in the Asia Pacific region to 26.85 million in Q1, with average revenue per membership in the region up 9% to US$9.71.