Despite producing world hits like “Squid Game” in 2021, Netflix’s fourth quarter returns present the streaming large struggling to keep up a lead over its opponents. The firm fell quick of its projections for brand spanking new subscribers this quarter, including 8.3 million versus its projected 8.5 million — it additionally initiatives so as to add simply 2.5 million subscribers in Q1 2022, down from 4 million final year (the corporate says it’s because it has “a extra back-end weighted content material slate” for the quarter). Overall, this year marks a downward pattern in subscriber growth — its the corporate’s lowest growth year since 2015 and a few 50% lower from its pandemic-inflated 2020 numbers.
Image Credits: Netflix
“Consumers have all the time had many selections relating to their leisure time — competitors that has solely intensified during the last 24 months as leisure corporations all world wide develop their very own streaming providing,” the corporate wrote in its letter to shareholders, admitting that “competitors could also be affecting [its] marginal growth some.”
While Netflix has about 222 million whole subscribers, bigger conglomerates like Disney (which additionally owns Hulu and ESPN) have continued to increase at a extra aggressive tempo. Disney ended 2021 with 179 million whole subscribers throughout Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+, and it plans to double the quantity of nations that Disney+ is accessible in by fiscal 2023. Disney additionally introduced the creation of an International Content and Operations group to increase its direct-to-consumer streaming internationally. HBO Max is rising too — the corporate stated that December had been its most-viewed month since the service’s launch in May 2020.
Netflix introduced final week that it plans to boost subscription costs within the US and Canada, whereas in India, the platform lowered its costs to attempt to entice extra shoppers after six rocky years within the huge leisure market. Netflix can be experimenting with one other new income stream: gaming. The firm just lately acquired the gaming studio Night School and has developed video games based mostly on its personal IP, just like the hit present “Stranger Things.” If this week’s largest tech tales inform us something, it’s that gaming will be very profitable. As anticipated, Netflix says it can increase its portfolio of video games in 2022.
Another new avenue for Netflix to develop its subscriber base lies in content material advertising and marketing — the corporate launched an internet site referred to as Tudum final month, hiring leisure journalists and editors from publications like Allure, Vanity Fair and Bitch Media to share unique content material about Netflix originals.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/20/netflix-q4-2021-results-subscriber-numbers/
