With 23.6 million subscribers to its streaming video services in Canada and the United States, Netflix is rapidly becoming an entertainment lion in North America.
In a first quarter conference call last month, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company has a penetration rate of 21 percent in the United States, supporting 22.8 million subscribers among 110 million households.
In the first quarter, Netflix wooed another 3.3 million domestic subscribers and inked several streaming content agreements to broaden its library of TV shows and movies, securing rights to carry episodes of such programs as “Mad Men," “Glee" and “Sons of Anarchy." In a move that garnered widespread media attention, Netflix announced plans to exclusively carry “House of Cards," a television series starring Kevin Spacey and led by executive producer David Fincher, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Social Network" and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." And in a letter to shareholders, Netflix declared that an agreement it reached with CBS makes it “the only online premium subscription service that offers shows from all four broadcast networks as well as many of the largest cable TV networks."
The escalating popularity of Netflix and other companies that stream content over the Web has raised speculation that American consumers will nix their cable and satellite pay TV subscriptions.
But Netflix said the data shows that it is a supplement to multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) like Comcast and DIRECTV.
“While Netflix is likely to show huge growth again this year, we think MVPD cord cutting will be minimal to non-existent," the company wrote in the letter to shareholders. “We hear some stories from customers who have Netflix and no MVPD service, but these are generally people who rely on free broadcast TV (which is now in HD) and supplement with Netflix, rather than switching from MVPD to online."
Source: vision2mobile
