Can Global Entertainment Streaming Giant Netflix Continue to Dominate the Market?

So large and notorious is the app turned streaming brand Netflix, that almost no one has missed the “Netflix and Chill” trend. The brand is now valued in excess of $135billion and has over 120million global subscribers. Not only this but in 2018 the giant seriously ramped up its release of original content by adding 700 TV series and over 80 movies completely exclusive to the platform itself.

The online streaming service now comes pre-installed on numerous viewing devices including the vast majority of smart TVs and has grown to the point of shaking up Hollywood. Major releases including original film Bright featuring Will Smith and Bird Box with Sandra Bullock show that the brand is capable of producing Hollywood worthy content and that it is prepared to do and pay what it takes to achieve this. This truly is an app success story.

On the surface, it would seem that business is great and everything is moving along swiftly. Challenges are starting to surface however. In 2018 Netflix lost some investor confidence and a drop-in share valuation when it failed to hit two growth targets for acquiring new subscribers. Missing quarterly targets by a million or so might not seem so bad when you’re looking at 100+million subscribers already, but it does show that perhaps the Netflix beast is slowing.

The challenges for the business now will come mainly from the fact that the majority of the easy gain subscribers from the US and main western nations will be hitting saturation and that low hanging fruit as it were, will be starting to dry up. In order to push on and continue to grow, the brand will need to increase marketing and promotional activity as well as keep up its stellar production of content.

There is another bump in the road ahead too. Disney has been lining up for many years to launch its own streaming service. Not only will the be a major competitor for Netflix and number two streaming service Amazon, but it also means that one of the biggest names in Hollywood and general entertainment production will be pulling the rights to all of its shows, movies and characters from other services. Meaning that of course, Netflix will no longer have the rights to show any Disney content including the enormously popular Star Wars and Marvel universes.

Can Netflix continue to afford to produce the way they need to in order to survive? And can they continue to attract new subscribers along the way with big boys like Disney setting up on their own as rivals? Whatever happens, it’s going to be an interesting 12-24 months for online streaming services.