Recently, Netflix posted its quarterly earnings report, which showcased that the worldâs biggest streaming service has a significant subscribersâ number decrease. Particularly, Netflix said that in the first quarter of the year, the number of its subscribers dropped by 200,000. Whatâs worse, according to internal estimations, this number will reach 2 million this year. However, those subscribers donât evaporate. Moreover, they subscribe to other services such as HBO.
According to the latest report by HBO, the streaming service (including HBO Max) added almost 13 million new subscribers last year. Interestingly, 3 million out of that number was added in the last quarter. Simply put â Netflix lost 2 million subscribers, while HBO got 3 million new users.
As for the total subscribers’ number, HBO and HBO Max have 76.8 million subscribers worldwide. This is nearly the third of Netflixâs 221.64 million subscribers. Moreover, it lies behind Disney Plus, which has 129.8 million subscribers.
Interestingly, 48.6 million out of 76.8 million subscribers are domestic users. As a reference, a year ago, the number of domestic subscribers was 44.2 million. So we can state that HBO and HBO Max âworkâ not only on domestic users but also on users from other countries. This talks about the diversity of the content they provide. Also, unlike Netflix, HBO is expanding territorially. We mean it has started offering its services to many new regions. So we should keep seeing such a trend for a while.
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Any Streaming Service Has To Think About Content … and Password Sharing
In fact, when looking at the content of this streaming service, we understand why itâs become so popular recently. Apart from the âGame of Thronesâ, the company has released a number of outstanding tv shows and movies. Plus, it is also offering new hits from the Warner Bros. catalog.
Well, in this regard, we should recall a factor that could affect Netflixâs performance. We mean this streaming service and its rivals as well have to fight against password and login sharing. As Netflix estimated, there are over 100 million households that use the service via shared passwords. âItâs harder to grow membership in many markets,â as a result of the situation, Netflix said.
AT&T CEO John Stankey (ex-boss of HBO) said âWe were thoughtful about how we built the product and that we gave customers enough flexibility but we donât want to see rampant abuse.â
Lastly, we guess the situation will worsen later this year when Disney Plus launches ad-sponsored lower-cost plans. On contrary to this, Netflix is raising prices for its plans.
