A1 Austria has made its A1 Xplore TV service available on Fire TV in Austria – the first time that the Pay TV offering has been made available as a connected TV app. The Fire TV implementation provides access to the full Xplore TV experience and so represents an ‘operator as an app’ alternative to taking a set-top box. Fire TV is a natural choice for a connected TV app offering in Austria, where Fire TV sticks are a popular connected TV device and Amazon Prime Video is a strong SVOD.
Johannes Natterer, Head of Residential TV & Services at A1 Telekom Austria, says: “A1 Xplore TV is an entertainment platform that brings the best TV channels, hand-picked on demand library content and streaming apps in a single package. Extending the video service to Amazon Fire TV is a major step towards the ultimate goal of A1 Xplore TV becoming the number one TV service in our territory, giving our users the freedom to enjoy TV on any screen of their choice in the best possible quality. Achieving this goal would not have been possible without the expertise and dedication from our partner company Zappware. The key to success is ensuring the user experience on Fire TV is consistent to the user experience on the set top boxes.”
Patrick Vos, CEO of Zappware, which provides the platform and UX for Xplore TV, adds: “Zappware’s vision is to deploy our NeXX 4.0 user experience in a device-agnostic way. This is what service providers and end-users expect, especially generation Z consumers. A1 Xplore TV was launched on set-top boxes, smartphones, tablets and PCs in 2020. Now it has been extended to Fire TV. Super aggregation is a key offering for service providers to confirm their leadership in home entertainment.”
He adds: “If you want to win the battle for HDMI-1, it is crucial that service providers are device agnostic and extend a great user experience onto the most relevant devices. By deploying a set-top-box like experience on a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), the addressable market is significantly broadened.”
Want to learn more about the future of Pay TV?
Patrick Vos will be speaking at Connected TV World Summit this morning, June 15, about ‘The future of service providers, at the centre of every home’. He appears during a session dedicated to the ‘Ultimate Video Entertainment Facilitators’ that takes a close look at super-aggregation and also features Discovery, Virgin Media, Swisscom, PBS, Tele2, Omdia and 3Vision.
You can hear Patrick outline the key capabilities that will ensure operator relevance, loyalty and revenue growth during the rest of this decade, including super-aggregation and ‘beyond video’. Vos appears at approx. 0925 BST / 1025 CEST, and you can read more about that interview here. You can register to watch Connected TV World Summit here.
