The Iranian video on demand platform ‘Filimo’ has released its annual usership records, reporting a sharp rise in its traction during the past Iranian year which ended in March, with subscribers spending 1.154 billion minutes watching videos through the services, an outstanding %445 year-on-year hike.
Furthermore, through a blog post on Filimo’s website, the company reports a huge surge in its popularity with the number of its subscribers up 581% YoY. The company is yet to release the number of its users.
The overall time of uploaded videos on the platform reached 581,000 minutes, indicating a 73% growth compared to the 336,000 minutes a year earlier.
During the period, the number of movies and TV series’ episodes available on Filimo increased 114% reaching 9,600 from 4,500.
Online content composed 91% of users’ watching records, with offline material holding a mere 9% share. This indicates that with the enhanced quality of Internet services in Iran most users opt to watch videos on the go instead of downloading them on their devices.
As per the figures, 44% of the content was viewed from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (4% between 8 to 10 a.m.), 10% between 12 a.m. to 1 a.m., and the remaining 11% were watched from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.
The firm further reports that plenty of family movies and films dealing with social issues were watched at 11 p.m.
Blockbusters
Filimo has also ranked the movies available on the platform based on the time users have spent watching them. The animated feature ‘Big Hero 6’ (14 million minutes) and the Iranian comedy ‘Khaltour’ (9 million minutes) were two motion pictures beating the rest in viewer statistics.
As for the series category, 59 episodes of the Iranian romantic soap opera ‘Shahrzad’ has notched up 171 million minutes of subscriber watching time, with 81 episodes of the animated series ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ viewed for 39 million minutes.
The top three genres were action with 323 million minutes of viewer history, animation claiming a 316 million minute share, and the family category having been watched for 165 million minutes.
‘Into the Badlands’ is an American TV show that subscribers got hooked on with 63% of them watching up to the end of season 2, currently waiting for the third one to be released.
The most dedicated user binge-watched 165 episodes of the Japanese anime Naruto in an unbelievably short span of 3 days; on average, watching each episode of the show takes 20 to 25 minutes.
A snail-paced subscriber made groundbreaking Filimo history by taking 6 days to fully watch ‘The Dark Knight’, one of the most popular movies in the Batman franchise that earned the late Heath Ledger an Academy Award for best actor in the supporting role of the Joker.
‘Italy Italy’ is the Iranian film that saw 184,000 users losing interest in following the feature just after its initial 10 to 15 minutes.
Similarly, the Italian drama ‘St. Michael Had a Rooster’ failed to intrigue 6,000 viewers for more than 30 minutes.
Superstars
Filimo reports point out that Mohammadreza Golzar, Shahab Hosseini, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Parviz Parastoui are the most popular Iranian actors among viewers.
Among foreign actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro seem to have the biggest fan bases among Filimo users.
Persian actresses Sahar Ghoreishi, Taraneh Alidoosti, Tarlan Parvaneh and Leila Hatami have managed to turn the majority of subscribers into big-time admirers, with Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence and Natalie Portman as their foreign rivals.
Short History
Established in early 2015, this carbon copy of Netflix is owned by Aparat, an online video streaming website known to some as YouTube’s Iranian counterpart.
Filimo offers an archive filled with Iranian, as well as foreign movies, TV shows, documentary features and televised stage shows. Subscribers can browse through categories and watch items of their choice.
One of the main advantages of Filimo is presenting users with the chance to choose the display resolution of their preference; this means when a user has access to low-speed Internet can keep on watching a video by decreasing its resolution.
The video on demand platform requires users to submit subscriptions on the website, asking them to pay a monthly fee in return for the services they receive. Domestic e-payment gateways are provided for local subscribers as well as PayPal for those living abroad.
It merits mention that Local Internet Service Providers such as MobinNet and AsiaTech cooperate with Filimo in the provision of free Internet packages to the video on demand service provider. Filimo has an application, available for Android devices on Google Play and local app market Cafe Bazaar, and iOS users may download the software from SibApp which is the alternative market for iDevices in Iran.
