Netflix: ‘Next 100m subs far more likely mobile viewers’
April 18, 2017
By Colin Mann
With Netflix CEO Reed Hastings advising shareholders that the streaming service expects to cross the 100 million-member mark this weekend, Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, has suggested that the next 100 million subscribers are going to be far more likely to be watching content on mobile than the first 100 million.
Speaking during Netflix’s Q1 2017 Earnings Conference Call, Hastings said the company was “super-excited” at the expectation of crossing 100 million, describing it as “a big accomplishment” but “really just the beginning”. “When you look at YouTube having a billion active users and a billion hours every day. When you look at Facebook’s, multi-billion numbers. We see that the Internet is just a phenomenal opportunity, of course, we’re pay service, not ad-supported,” he pointed out.
“We’re not as deep in international as those companies. But we definitely see a big opportunity around the world to just continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is make fantastic content, get people really excited about that content, and then we’re just continuing to grow,” he added.
Asked to share details of customising content for mobile given that since Netflix had launched globally, mobile usage of Netflix had really soared, Sarandos said that what the service knew was that “the next 100 million subscribers are going to be far more likely to be watching content on mobile than the first 100 million.Whether or not they want to watch anything differently, we’re going to find out”.