one hundred and seventy million
That’s One, Seven, Zero and six Zeros behind. It’s the number of subscribers declared by Netflix to be reached by the end of 2019. We’ll see that in a year.
It’s more than half USA population and more than three times population of South Korea.
Apple sold about 170 Million iPhones in 2014, seven years after the first iPhone Launch when they reached 1.4 million sales. Around 12 times more in seven years. Not too bad…
Well Netflix in 2012 had 33 Million Subscribers, 27 Millions In the USA alone. They barely started World expansion during last quarter of 2012. They were declared losing money at the time. Starting only original contents, they were mainly depending on contents sold by mainstream studios.
A defining Moment for Internet TV
Truly Disruptive, we can only admit Netflix is now a standard. Are you still watching television, I mean normal channels ? I am not anymore. I am on a slow TV diet. I binge now when, how and where I want. I stop when I feel like, when I need to and then would come back to watching if, when I want out. Netflix, YouTube, iTunes and Amazon have changed the way we consume television.
And for IT
So how does this work ? Digital Transformation to its Glory, of course !
Amazon Web Services has helped with building this new Media Empire. Another proof that cloud scalability, efficiency and modularity offer businesses to grow worldwide. Netflix also loves open source, it is a the core of this Tech company. Yes, do not let yourself fooled : Netflix is not a movie studio per-se, it is a tech company, like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. Speaking of which: Netflix file sharing platform is G Drive !
Netflix uses Amazon and Google Services
Netflix is a Monster that needs to deliver 140 million hours of video every day to almost half a billion devices, because subscribers would use many devices at the same time : Pa’ and Ma’ on their Apple Android Tv, While Junior watches is favorite series on his phone…
To sustain its growth Netflix needs the Cloud and all the powerful technologies Amazon can provide: Big data for their classification and statistics, all the compute power possible to speed up the search engine and the recommendation engine. 24/7.
Netflix could be able to maintain private data centers around the world to deliver the same service. But growth and current paradigm prevented that from happening. While they still need developers and systems engineers, the do not need anymore to invest in costly hardware.
Netflix investments
No Netflix has decided to invest in creativity and provide now its own shoes and movies. They have decided this year alone to invest 12 billion dollars in original contents, sailing away from other studios: that is 3 times more than Amazon Studios.
If you take a studio like Disney for example, they put out around 20 movies this year. Netflix released 80 movies ! Not that quantity guarantees quality, but we are not here to discuss movie critics !
Nevertheless, the intent is clear: bet on creators! Numerous A-list Hollywood Actors and Directors are turning to Netflix to get their projects made. The studios are losing a battle here.
Netflix has started a disruption there, changing our way to consume Television. You can watch your favorite whenever and wherever you feel like it. But more than this, from a technological driven company they became a major independent movie studio.