NEW YORK—Comcast has been busy building a lineup of streaming video apps integrated into its X1 platform, and the company plans to keep going.
Chris Reynolds, executive director of technology and product for Comcast Cable, said Comcast has integrated about 37 apps total and plans to have integrated about 30 streaming apps on the platform by the end of the year. He said the effort is geared toward keeping customers on the X1 platform, where Comcast can personalize and make discoverable content regardless of where it’s coming from.
The Channel Store is Comcast’s name for its internal streaming platform, and Reynolds said the company is partnering with mostly SVODs and some AVODs to fill out that Channel Store app lineup and help fill in some of the gaps in Comcast’s video service.
But Comcast still has a way to go to get to its goal, which Reynolds said is to have the top 100 connected TV apps integrated on X1. He said the idea is to idea is to reach parity with platforms such as Roku and that Comcast is focused on reaching that level as quickly as it can.
Most recently, Comcast integrated streaming service MHz Choice into the X1 platform. In August, Comcast integrated Amazon Prime Video onto its platform, years after building competitor Netflix into the X1.
RELATED: Deeper Dive—The big difference between Netflix and Amazon Prime Video on Comcast
Reynolds said that as Comcast continues to partner with streaming services on X1 integration, monetization is not necessarily the focus. He said Comcast focuses on reach, consumption and frequency as the key performance indicators for streaming services on X1.
From a technical standpoint, Reynolds said Comcast can help with content ingest and distribution for SVODs, or the company can work with third parties for those functions.