Netflix reaches 148 million subscribers, says it isn’t afraid of Apple or Disney

Netflix has accumulated 148 million subscribers around the world, the company revealed in its earnings report for the first quarter of 2019.

For Q1 2018, the company posted 125 million subscribers, marking a 23 million increase since this time last year.

Specifically, Netflix added 9.6 million subscribers in the last three months, above expectations of 8.9 million new subscribers.

This works out to record quarterly subscriber growth for Netflix and comes in spite of the fact that the company raised its prices over the past several months.

In terms of revenue, Netflix brought in $4.52 billion USD during this quarter, compared to the $4.50 billion that was forecast.

Some of Netflix’s most popular original movies and shows that released during the last quarter include:

• Triple Frontier (52 million)
• Umbrella Academy (45 million)
• The Highwaymen (40 million)
• Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (20 million)

In the second quarter, Netflix says it will test a weekly top 10 list of its most popular content in the United Kingdom. After a few months, it says it will decide whether it wants to expand the test to other regions.

While Netflix has been doing exceptionally well lately, the streaming market landscape is set to change drastically in the coming months. Both Disney and Apple have unveiled multi-billion dollar streaming services which are set to launch in fall 2019.

However, Netflix says it isn’t worried about the increased competition.

“We don’t anticipate that these new entrants will materially affect our growth because the transition from linear to on-demand entertainment is so massive and because of the differing nature of our content offerings,” wrote Netflix in a letter to shareholders. “We believe there is vast demand for watching great TV and movies and Netflix only satisfies a small portion of that demand.”

Source: Netflix