They lost 700,000 from Russia gained 500,000 elsewhere net -200,000. I don't know how much they normally gain but I suspect a lot are jumping to conclusions from the headline. Loosing Russia wasn't really a consumer choice type of thing.
I do wish they'd pick up a few more good Sci-Fi shows and then cancel them to confirm my personal grudge. It's so hard to waste my time on today's Sci-Fi...get off my lawn, etc, etc.
Let's ignore their Russian subscribers loss for the time being. Analysts were expecting them to add 2.7m and they added 500K elsewhere (taking the number from your comment) so they are still way off and it proves that their growth is slowing at a rapid pace because of increasing competition from Apple, Amazon, Disney and HBO.
> slowing at a rapid pace because of increasing competition from Apple, Amazon, Disney and HBO.
I don't doubt that but I do suspect other services will see some slow down too as a result of general bullshit and uncertainty in the economy. It's never really just one thing.
Then again...yeah Disney+ is a really good deal. And Amazon's numbers are inflated from other Prime stuff. I'm just an old man yelling at a screen from his arm chair because I can't trust anyone.
The other services are not charging a premium just for 4K, are not bundling 4K with 4 screens and have content that competes/beats Netflix's. They also haven't saturated the markets so you will not see them slowing down yet.
I predict Netflix will change two things business wise:
1. Ads.
2. No content dumps, instead 1 episode/week.
The day Netflix has ads is the day I unsubscribe. The price, here in Canada at least, has already doubled since I first subscribed and is getting close to a cable subscription.
Ads and high price is why everyone cut the cable in the first place. (And poor content)
It depends on how they implement it. The CEO said he was open to lower-priced tiers with ad support. I wouldn't mind an ad before each show if it meant a lower price. But if they raise the ad-free prices or start putting ads in during the shows, people will be more upset.
I think in this case it’s supposedly still accelerating but you are depressed the gas and the engine is spooling back down to idle. I think the term is Jerk
How much more growth can Netflix really muster? They really have penetrated most regions including APAC. Adding 500k is a major accomplishment when viewed thru that lens.
I’m curious as to when the forecast is from. We missed our expected q1 target by quite a margin as well because the market, and I mean any market, has been hit by the war and the inflation.
Would Netflix subscriptions really be impacted due to the war? Aside from a handful of countries that are bearing the brunt of the conflict and sanctions.
I'm already paying for Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max. Sharing those with friends, and receiving Disney+ and Hulu in return. We're back to where we started, with everything dashed across a bunch of different 'networks', and I left entirely because of the steep cable bill.
Like hell I'm going to add even more services, like AppleTV or Paramount+.
Torrents are too complicated for most people, compared to the ease of buying an 'Android TV box' at a cell phone store, Craiglist or flea market, and paying $15/month for cable channels and TV/movie streaming. The UI is relatively good, worlds apart from the 2010 era when finding shows and episodes required going through a list of gorillavid.com links.
That’s exactly what I expect in about 3-5 years. I particularly have my eye on BitTorrent modifications like webtorrent which may get the viewing experience even closer to a paid streaming service.
Sci-fi is in a bad state not just on Netflix but everywhere. I hoped arriving in the space age would mean more programming, but my fear of it becoming mainstream meaning that a sprinkling of science/space in the background of whatever drama, horror, thriller, etc becomes what's categorized as sci-fi. There's very little where science plays any meaningful part in the premise or plot.
I've read my fair share of Reynolds and for what it's worth if anyone was looking to get into him, I'd recommend House of Suns but to skip Pushing Ice. The latter starts strong but kind of gets nowhere.
Another pet peeve is the grouping of sci-fi with fantasy or horror. There are few cases where there is sufficient science in the fantasy or horror that obeys some premise (e.g. differing physics) but mostly the grouping is noise.
What Netflix really needs is genre search that respects "-" as in "sci-fi -horror -fantasy".
There's Dark and Altered Carbon Season 1. Everything Everywhere All At Once just came out in theatres and that's supposed to be crazy Sci Fi (not supposed to go in knowing much about it)
> They lost 700,000 from Russia gained 500,000 elsewhere net -200,000...Loosing Russia wasn't really a consumer choice type of thing.
Management's loss "reasons" all seem valid, but don't forget the production aspect (which is much closer tied to competition)
> "In an effort to continue to gain share in the market, Netflix has increased its content spend, particularly on originals. To pay for it, it’s hiked prices of its service. The company said Tuesday those price changes are helping to bolster revenue, but were partially responsible for a loss of 600,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada during the most recent quarter."
My observation is that they are selling attention addiction like Facebook without caring about quality content recently.
Ex: Korean copycat shows and "documentaries", just because both categories tend to rate higher on IMDB. Seems like a decision a PM will make, based on metrics to improve profit, not quality - i.e. give users what they want, even if it is bad for them (or the business) in the long term (as seen with competition's content quality)
PS: Similar thing happened with Facebook back in February. The point is it might take years, but eventually the bs will catch up.
Their desperation is starting to show with the exploration of potential "low hanging fruit" revenue sources like ads instead of new growth markets (games) - as is happening with indirect competitors (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, FB); and direct competitors (Hulu, Disney and HBO): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31101175
The thing about public companies...is that most eventually fall into the pressures of "consistent growth" by stockholders, following the pack mentality (profit at all costs), even if sorting to unethical means.
I hope they expand their international catalog. 3%, Biohackers and Better than Us were all quite enjoyable and each had their own interesting cultural spins.
'Smoking' is really good (not sci fi, though, but I recommend it to everyone). Old Enough has been thoroughly charming as well.
I'd imagine Netflix could get a huge catalog of content's US streaming rights for pennies on the dollar because hasn't been much of a market for it - practically free money for foreign IP holders.
In doing so, they could get huge brand loyalty from bilingual folks, plus more content for people willing to watch with subs. My wife's mom watches tons of dramas on youtube, we'd get her a netflix account in an instant if we thought she would use it - UX watching shows via youtube is abysmal.
Pay for dubbing once a show proves itself without and 'relaunch' the branding to wider audiences. Netflix should have very solid stats on which users are willing to watch foreign language shows with subs, so they can do targeted homepage advertising to test the shows easily.
Dev lift should be light, really just need to add a search filter for original language/country of origin.
I'm fairly certain they're already doing that. Squid Game, Money Heist being two of the most prominent examples. I've come across more and more imported properties dubbed over, which I don't mind at all! Some are quite good, and I probably wouldn't have found them otherwise.
Fair point. I think they could get a lot more aggressive, though.
I'm conversational in Japanese, and I'd love to see Japanese variety/game shows on netflix. There are thousands of hours of content that have never been available to the US market afaik - I think I've only seen them on youtube or dailymotion when not in japan.
I wonder what the expense of subbing these shows would be. Perhaps they could do a non-exclusive licensing deal where they contribute the sub IP back to the IP holder for an even-further-reduced rate.
Right you are, I was under the impression it was a licensed IP like a number of other properties I've come across in deep scrolls through their catalog.
Yeah, Netflix is already a gold mine for me as a language learner.
As the average quality of their English language has, imo, decreased, the fact that I can easily find good content in other languages is a big selling point.
That's not the important part of the announcement, and it's not the reason the stock tanked.
The important part is subscriber loss in other countries and the projection that over 2 million more subscribers will be lost over the next quarter. Compared to a previous estimate that the company would see a net increase in subscribers by 2.5 million last quarter, that's a big letdown and the market's reaction would have been the same even if the Russia numbers weren't bad.
They still lost 700k subscribers in Russia due to Russia's war. That's a hard fact and not a bogus excuse. "Blaming Russia's war in Ukraine seems to be the new excuse for everything" is a misdirected accusation insinuating they are blaming the whole report on it and that they are completely unaffected by the war.
And I explained why it is. Don't comment unless you have something meaningful to add. Circling back to the same comment I just replied to without elaborating is just noise.
I do wish they'd pick up a few more good Sci-Fi shows and then cancel them to confirm my personal grudge. It's so hard to waste my time on today's Sci-Fi...get off my lawn, etc, etc.