Advanced Television

Netflix goes mobile

April 17, 2018

By Chris Forrester

Netflix’s Q1 numbers show that the OTT operator is growing as fast as ever. It added a net 7.4 million global subs during the quarter, only slightly down on the previous quarter’s record-breaking 8.33 million.

US new additions were also healthy at 1.96 million. Overall, this latest quarter year were the second-biggest ever, and the quarter-year exceeded all consensus expectations, and to a total of 125 million subs. International operations now generate 50 per cent of revenues, and 55 per cent of its subscribers.

Netflix generated $290 million (€234m) net income on revenue of more than $3.7 billion. That compared to net income of $178 million and revenue of $2.63 billion during the previous-year Q1 period.

Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos took the analyst call with Benjamin Swinburne of investment bank Morgan Stanley, and confirmed that they would be spending “upwards” of $8 billion this year on content.

As to the recent bundling of Netflix into the pay-TV operations of Comcast and Sky, Gregory Peters, Chief Product Officer, said: “We love the fact that we can work with these partners to access whole new groups of consumers, make it easy for them to find out about Netflix, to sign up and have a great way to access the service and watch more and more. So you’ll see us leverage that sort of evolving strategy not only in the markets that we’ve been in for many years, but also in these new markets.”

Netflix confirmed that it will be launching a dedicated service to mobile phones. Peters said: “We definitely want to have a mobile experience which allows us to access more of that market and access a group of consumers who basically only want to have their relationship with Netflix on a mobile device. And so whether that is making sure that our apps are lightweight enough so they load really quickly and have a great experience there, to making sure that our encoding is very, very efficient, so that even if you have a less-than-great network connection, you can still get a really incredible video experience on that mobile phone.”

Sarandos stressed that Netflix would not be moving into live news, but products such as the monthly special with David Letterman (one episode of which featured former President Obama) which he described as “topical interviews” would continue, and viewers would see more of that type.

Categories: APPS, Articles, Broadcast, Business, Content, Mobile, Mobile TV, OTT, OTT, Premium, Production, Results, VOD