BBC Worldwide chief Tim Davie has unveiled his vision for the future of the corporation's commercial arm, including a major rethink of its digital strategy.

On Friday, Davie told staff that plans for a global iPlayer app had been scrapped, unveiled plans to roll out its digital store into BBC.com, and announced a £30m-a-year increase in programming investment, including a new drama from the writer of The X-Files.

The plan for a new standalone subscription-based iPlayer app for global markets, which was first mooted in 2010 and has been in market testing for two years, is to be dropped.

Davie said that BBC Worldwide has too many different websites and digital propositions, and there needed to be more focus to compete against rivals such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon.

The global iPlayer app will be folded into a revamped BBC.com, which will include a new long-form video player.

"It is purely a branding question: if you want content you go to BBC.com," he said. "It has been too fragmented and [globally] it is a ferocious market dominated by US and Asian players – like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon – and we have to have scale and a real competitive edge."

Davie said there is a three-year plan to develop BBC.com – part of achieving the vision director general Tony Hall laid out last week of doubling global reach from 250 million to 500 million a week by 2022 – and added that content payment systems could be tailored to individual markets. He added that the BBC.com site is currently visited by 60 million users.

BBC.com will also include a digital store where international consumers will be able to buy, watch and keep programmes.

The Davie also unveiled eight-part drama series Intruders, penned by The X-Files writer and executive producer Glen Morgan, which is based on Michael Marshall Smith's best-selling novel.

The show, made for BBC America but with plans to bring it to the the UK, was announced alongside plans to boost BBC Worldwide's content spend by £30m a year to £200m.

The 18% increase, which will be used for a range of content initiatives including "investing in distinctive premium British content", will be funded by making BBC Worldwide a "leaner more efficient company", said Davie.

One example is that BBC Worldwide will stop making games based on its intellectual property – it will close down a games production unit in Los Angeles, although it will still look to licence games and strike partnerships.

Davie also announced plans to launch a new channel, BBC First, that will be the home of premium BBC drama.

The channel, which will include comedy, will launch first in Australia on the pay-TV Foxtel platform next August.

Davie said that it will sit alongside BBC Earth, its brand for natural history and science content, and an as-yet-unnamed third channel brand that will "target male audiences with a blend of content that raises the bar in the factual entertainment space and an approach which captures the maverick spirit of the BBC's best shows".

He summed up the plans as a three-pronged effort to properly globalise the BBC via the digital revamp, investment in new programming and the new channel.

"They combine an increased commitment to content investment with new BBC content brands alongside a more powerful and unified digital engine," he said.

"Taken together, these three investment priorities will serve to grow the BBC's footprint across the world, both via our own services and our important third-party sales, resulting in greater access by audiences to BBC and British content and sustainable cash flows back to the BBC."

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