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Netflix Nears 100 Million Subscribers (go.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the changing-internet-landscape dept.

With the release of its first-quarter earnings, Netflix predicted it will surpass 100 million global subscribers this weekend. "The service added nearly 5 million subscribers during the first three months of the year, and will end March with 98.7 million customers in roughly 190 countries," reports ABC News. From the report: About 51 million of Netflix's subscribers are in the U.S. By the end of this year, Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson expects the majority of the company's subscribers to be overseas. Netflix ended March with nearly 48 million subscribers outside the U.S. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings expects the next 100 million subscribers to come more quickly than the first 100 million, but he didn't provide a specific timetable during online video review of the company's first quarter. The Los Gatos, California company currently has a market value of about $63 billion. Its stock rose $1.90 to $149.15 in Monday's extended trading, even though subscriber growth during the first quarter came in slightly below management forecasts. As it is, Netflix expects to spend about $6 billion on programming this year. The Los Gatos, California, company earned $178 million on revenue of $2.6 billion in the first quarter. Analysts predict Netflix will make $482 million on revenue of more than $11 billion for the entire year.

1 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Keep the discs coming! by Hrrrg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm a long-time Netflix subscriber - to the disc service, not the streaming service. Blu-rays look way better than streaming. However, what a lot of people don't know is that the disc selection is vast compared to the streaming selection. I googled it recently and found articles that claimed with streaming you had the choice of 6000 movies, with the disc service the selection was about 96,000 titles.

    Unfortunately, the same articles claimed that while the disc-mailing service was very profitable, only a small percentage of netflix's subscribers used it (something like 5%) and that most likely it would go away in the next few years...

    So, if you don't like the lmited selection of Netflix's streaming service, get the discs and let's keep it alive!