No doubt about it, Netflix tops the market segment in streaming movies for low fixed monthly subscription fees. But now mSpot, the mobile and PC entertainment company that delivers music, movies, radio and TV to more than six million mobile customers across 10 wireless carriers, is offering similar monthly deals with its “mSpot Movies Club” for streaming movies. Its strategy is to offer more recent movies than Netflix does at similar prices, while moving closer Netflix’s unlimited movie streaming pricing. Netflix has more than 20 million users.
Daren Tsui, mSpot CEO, said in an interview his company has been able to secure new release movies with the company’s studio partners on the same day that studios release them on DVDs. Netflix still has to wait as much as 28 days longer: “We think the idea of waiting for a DVD to show up at your house is old school now. Netflix’s problem is that it does not offer new releases as streaming videos. We can do that.”
Basic mSpot membership costs $4.99 for 20 movie credits, or up to four movies. You can pay $7.99 a month for the Plus membership, which gives you 40 movie credits, or up to eight movies. That’s in contrast to Netflix’s unlimited model at $7.99 per month. There’s another mSpot option to pay $15.99 a month, offering 80 movies credits, or up to 16 movies. If you join the mSpot Movies Club, mSpot will now charge $1.99 to $3.99 per new release movie.
RBR-TVBR observation: If you stream an mSpot movie to your PC, you can watch it there and pick up where you left off on an iPhone or vice versa. While Netflix offers streaming on the iPhone, iPad and Windows phone, you still can’t jump from one to the other. That’s a leg up to begin with for mSpot. But by getting films on the same day that DVDs are launched, mSpot may start accelerating more against Netflix in the marketplace. Nevertheless, Netflix is already onto the next thing with its move to offer original content.
