Netflix shoots for 90M US subscibers
updated 06:05 pm EST, Tue February 14, 2012
Media provider seeks to increase by 3x
Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings believes his company could be much larger. In a presentation given in November but caught Tuesday, Hastings expressed the view that his media streaming and DVD rental company could reach 60 to 90 million subscribers in the US. Netflix currently has 24.4 million members in its base.
The intended audience appeared to be potential new hires. In the presentation, Reed identified HBO, and it HBO Go as Netflix's primary competitor. He estimated that HBO had approximately 30 million subscribers. He then reasoned by extrapolation that Netflix, by virtue of its lower $8 per month cost, its deeper library, and its ability to be viewed on more devices, should be able to achieve two to three times HBO's size.
Netflix is slowly recovering from a series of missteps it made last year. The first of these was when it announced it was going to charge separate fees for DVD and streaming services. This led to a public relations fiasco and a backlash from DVD subscribers. About 2.8 million disc subscribers left in the most recent quarter. The second misstep occurred when the company announced it was going to spin off its DVD operations as a separate entity to be called Qwikster. This was negatively received by both customers and the stock market. Netflix eventually dropped the idea. [via GigaOM]
