Last night, Netflix announced its quarterly earnings, revealing that it now serves 81.5 million users globally.
That’s a big jump on the 74.8 million reported in the previous quarter, and far greater than the 62.3 million members reported in the first quarter of 2015.
However, don’t forget that Netflix membership figures are boosted by free trial users, who have yet to begin paying for the service.
Of the total users, 77.71 million pay a monthly fee, which means 3.79 million users – around 4.7% of the total userbase – aren’t paid members.
“We are off to a great start in 2016, expanding the Netflix service to 130 new countries in January and finished Q1 with over 81 million members on the strength of our fast-growing slate of original content,” reads Netflix’s letter to shareholders.
It continues: “As we’ve made vast improvements in our service and content, consumers see even more value and our membership grows.”
But despite Netflix’s recent global push, US subscribers still make up a dominant share of the company’s userbase. Total membership stateside is just shy of 47 million, up 2.23 million on the previous quarter.
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In the report, Netflix also discussed its ongoing “un-grandfathering” process, whereby subscribers on low, fixed-rate plans will be bumped up to newer pricing.
“With respect to un-grandfathering, currently, more than half of our US members pay only $7.99 or $8.99 for our $9.99 HD 2-screen plan,” Netflix writes. “We will phase out this grandfathering gradually over the remainder of 2016, with our longest-tenured members getting the longest benefit.”
It continues: “Most of our grandfathered members are in the US, but we’ll take the same approach internationally.”
Netflix adds that it expects “only modestly increased churn from un-grandfathering, partly because these members have been with us for a reasonable period already, and because our content continues to improve.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
