Netflix streaming has officially topped cable, one company with it’s 51 million U.S. subscribers out of 98.75 million worldwide climbing above the 48.6 million subscribers all together served by the top six U.S. cable companies.
Keeping score was Statsa, which analyzed the number of streaming subscribers worldwide from 2011 to 2017.
While Netflix was flourishing those largest cable companies have also lost 4 million subscribers, noted Ballotpedia.
Adding weight to those numbers, a study by Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson showed that Netflix accounted for about half of the overall 3 percent decline in TV viewing time among U.S. audiences last year.
Variety reported that bad news was calculated on an estimate that Netflix’s domestic subs streamed 29 billion hours of video last year.
Further, Nathanson predicted that Netflix’s total streaming hours as a percentage of TV viewing would continue to rise to about 14% by 2020.
Netflix was founded in the U.S. in 1997 and, initially introduced as a subscription based online service in 1999, later expanded its services to different markets, primarily in the Americas and Europe.
As of the first quarter of 2017, Statsa reported that Netflix had almost reached the 100 million mark for streaming subscribers, more than doubling its subscriber numbers from the start of 2014.
In line with this, Netflix’s annual revenue amounted to an all-time high of 8.83 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. This marks more than a tenfold increase in revenue since 2005.
This came as a relief to investors after Netflix’s worth took a hit in 2011, when CEO Reed Hastings announced the company would split its company into two different services
Net income dropped more than 13 times in 2012, noted Statsa, and the company only earned 17.15 million U.S. dollars for the year.
Netflix bounced back in 2014, when it reported the highest net income in its history.
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