LOS ANGELES/SINGAPORE – Couch potatoes now have more reason to stay at home: Video on demand streaming service Amazon Prime Video has launched in Singapore.

Hundreds of television programmes and movies are available to stream now, said Amazon. They include popular new original series The Grand Tour, an automotive series hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, as well as The Man in the High Castle, Transparent, Mozart in the Jungle and Tumble Leaf. More shows will be added to the service next year.

Singapore was one of the more than 200 countries and terrorities in which the service was launched on Wednesday (Dec 14), placing Amazon in direct competition with Netflix, which had its own global rollout earlier this year.

The territories where Prime Video is now available span virtually every region of the world, and include both developing and mature markets, from South-east Asia to Africa to Western Europe. As with Netflix, however, the service is not available in China.

Amazon is offering customers in Singapore and other new Prime Video regions an introductory price of US$2.99 per month — 50 per cent off the full price of US$5.99 a month — for the first six months, starting with a free seven-day trial at PrimeVideo.com.

Amazon Prime members in Belgium, Canada, France, India, Italy, and Spain can begin watching at no additional cost to their subscription.

Amazon has been spending heavily, sometimes at the cost of profits, on the creation and marketing of movies and TV shows. The company hopes that people will sign up for its Prime service to watch these videos — and in turn buy more goods from its online store to make the annual subscription worth it.

Although some kind of international expansion by Amazon Prime Video had long been expected, the timing of the announcement caught some observers by surprise. “It was well-known that Amazon was going to expand. We didn’t know it would do so quite so rapidly, but given Netflix did the same thing about a year ago, it’s not that surprising,” said Guy Bisson at Ampere Analysis.

Netflix is currently available in more than 130 countries, and is known for shows such as Stranger Things, Daredevil and Narcos. It debuted in Singapore in early January this year, and subscription fees start from S$10.98. When launched here, Netflix drew mixed responses with some customers saying the US version had a better library compared to its Singapore counterpart.

Subscribers can watch Amazon Prime Video through its app on Android and iOS phones and tablets, Fire Tablets and select LG and Samsung smart TVs; they can also download movies and TV shows for offline viewing, a feature Netflix introduced late last month. WITH AGENCIES