France’s FNAC attacks Brazilian OTT market
July 18, 2011
By Chris Forrester
French multimedia retailer FNAC is formally launching its FnacBox in Brazil, following a soft-launch some months ago and sales of about 1,000 units locally. To date the FnacBox is supplying OTT material without advertising, and depends on the user owning a ’connected’ TV with broadband HDMI access.
According to Pierre Paparemborde, project director, Fnac’s strategy is aimed at stepping into the market with the hardware by incorporating content through locally negotiated alliances. Fnac would launch its own Digital content offer in 2012. “The Brazilian digital content market is in its construction stage, no economy has been settled yet”, Paparemborde told local media.
Fnac already has overseas retail stores in Spain and Portugal, and thus has strong possibilities to create Spanish and Portuguese content for Latin America. 10 per cent of the company’s 33 per cent foreign revenues come from Spain, while 7 per cent comes from Portugal and about 5 per cent from Brazil.
Initially Fnac developed an alliance with Truetech, which provides video content to box users under a revenue share model. At present, the company relies on 1,200 available titles in FnacBox-Office bookshelf. Additionally, the company holds another alliance with the Brazilian OTT supplier Netmovies, which offers a free subscription period for FnacBox users.