The final months of 2019 have been busy ones for the video-streaming marketplace. November saw the long-awaited debut of Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) new streaming juggernaut, Disney+. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) also entered the market in November: The tech giant released Apple TV+, a premium subscription service housed within the free Apple TV app. And now Plex, a company specializing in media servers and entertainment platform software, has introduced a new streaming service of its own. The difference is that this one is free.
Plex's new free service will not be alone, of course; plenty of other streaming and tech giants are in on the market. Sony (NYSE: SNE) Crackle, the independent Tubi TV, Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) IMDb TV, and Roku (NASDAQ: ROKU) Channel are among the other free-to-stream services on the market right now. These advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) services have long coexisted with subscription video on demand (SVOD) giants like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX). But as Plex's version enters the world, it adds to a video-streaming service population that has never been larger. As the market continues to fracture, where will AVOD services fit in?
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