Netflix is unstoppable and people love them. That seems to be the conclusion after its earnings report for 2014. Netflix is planning to expand from about 50 countries today to 200 in the next 2 years, and will ramp up original content 3 times compared to last year.
A global Netflix in 2 years
Netflix has never been afraid to admit that it wants to go global, but it had anticipated that it would take 5 years when it spoke at an event in December. Netflix now believes that it can do it in just 2 years.
So what changed in just a matter of weeks? Netflix took stock of 2014, and everything looked great. People seem to love its original content. Marco Polo has “struck a chord across all Netflix territories”. Subscribers are flocking to the service, and Netflix now has 57.39 million members. It is expecting to reach close to 61.5 million by the end of March 2015.
Netflix will debut The Interview in the US and Canada on January 24, and has lots of original TV series and its first movie planned for August 2015. Netflix is planning to release 320 hours of original content in 2015, up 3 times compared to 2014. In total, Netflix intends to spend $3 billion on original content in 2015, and far more when you include licensed content. A full overview of new originals is available here.
Netflix will continue to push 4K in 2015, where it is also adding HDR (high dynamic range) that “may be a more significant step forward in viewing pleasure than UHD-4K”.
The streaming service will launch in Australia and New Zealand in late Q1. Later this year, Netflix will add “additional major countries”.