Streaming giant Netflix has lost more than 1 million subscribers between April and July, as more and more people decide to quit the service.
Losing members for more than two quarters in a row, Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, said he expected more to leave., estimating that 2 million subscribers, twice the amount, would leave within the three-month period. “If there was a single thing [that slowed it down], we might say ‘Stranger Things.'”
This subscriber loss remains the biggest in the firm’s history, with the US and Canada seeing the highest number of cancellations in the past three months, followed by Europe.
Guy Bisson, executive director at Ampere Analysis, says it was expected. “When you’re the leader, there’s only one direction to go, especially when a large amount of competition launches, which is what Netflix has seen in the last couple of years,” facing the likes of Apple TV, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and Disney +.
In a letter to shareholders, Netflix attributed its losses to a variety of factors, including password sharing, the rise in competition and a sluggish economy, saying: “Our challenge and opportunity is to accelerate our revenue and membership growth by continuing to improve our product, content, and marketing as we’ve done for the last 25 years, and to better monetize our big audience,” planning to ramp up its growth by introducing an ad-tier and clamping down on password sharing.
Even with the reported losses, Netflix remains the world’s dominant streaming service, with nearly 221 million paid subscribers around the world. Generating $8 billion in revenue, an 8.6 percent increase over the same period last year, Netflix also experienced a 7% surge in shares in after-hours trade after the announcement on Tuesday.
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