Post by Queen of the Damned on Jan 29, 2010 17:43:25 GMT -5
The New York Times
January 29, 2010
Netflix Prepares for Another International Venture
By REUTERS
LOS ANGELES — Six years after pulling the plug on a movie-rental-by-mail service in Britain to focus on competition at home, Netflix has offered some clues about its resurgent ambitions to enter an unidentified market outside the United States later this year.
Netflix said late last year that it would introduce a small, streaming-only operation in one other country in the second quarter, and learn from it before moving into more markets.
“We are focused on entering one country and seeing how we do,” the Netflix chief executive, Reed Hastings, said late Wednesday. “Because we are launching in the second half of the year I don’t think we could do a second country this year.”
Mr. Hastings declined to identify the market but hinted at how a roll-out might happen.
After the United States, “the big market for Hollywood content Europe,” he said. “Third is Asia. Fourth is the rest of the world. Canada is and was an option. It’s sort of international-lite.”
Since starting its U.S. streaming service in 2007, Netflix has focused on capitalizing on the prevalence of devices like Blu-ray DVD players, gaming consoles and PCs. Mr. Hastings said the international service would start the same way.
“The biggest installed base is laptops; they are pretty ubiquitous,” Mr. Hastings said when asked what user population the new service would target. Video game consoles would be the focus in the most advanced countries, he said.
Mr. Hastings said Netflix content managers were making separate deals for the international territory leading up to the start, which he would talk about publicly in September or October. But he gave no word of how large the title selection would be.
Nor would he comment on whether the company faced any major competition in the new market, but indications were that Netflix expected little resistance to its initial foray. Mr. Hastings said he expected the new service to be compatible with forecasts for an 11 percent operating margin globally.
Netflix was the pioneer of online movie rentals and a fast-growing darling of technology investors when it shut down its British DVD-by-mail service weeks before its 2004 start to respond to a challenge by Blockbuster in the United States and rumors that Amazon.com would enter the space.
The company lost about $10 million from the aborted endeavor as well as short-term hopes for easy subscriber growth fueled by access to international markets.
After a grueling price war that lasted years and seriously wounded Blockbuster, Netflix emerged stronger and bigger with a streaming option that was less expensive and easier to deploy abroad.
Movie Gallery was collateral damage in the battle. Once the second-largest store-based rental chain in the United States, Movie Gallery lost market share and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007. Movie Gallery is preparing to file again, according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
“The big difference is we were entering with DVDs only” in 2004, Mr. Hastings said. Now, he said, “it’s streaming only. That’s a big difference — no warehouses, no integration with the Royal Mail,” the British postal service. Another difference: Netflix’s revenue has grown fourfold, to a projected $2 billion this year from $501 million in 2004. “We are a lot bigger when we enter and streaming means less operational complexity — not having to figure out the mail for each country,” Mr. Hastings said.
Reuters
www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/technology/companies/29netflix.html
Enjoy it :-) its pretty good for the cheap price...
January 29, 2010
Netflix Prepares for Another International Venture
By REUTERS
LOS ANGELES — Six years after pulling the plug on a movie-rental-by-mail service in Britain to focus on competition at home, Netflix has offered some clues about its resurgent ambitions to enter an unidentified market outside the United States later this year.
Netflix said late last year that it would introduce a small, streaming-only operation in one other country in the second quarter, and learn from it before moving into more markets.
“We are focused on entering one country and seeing how we do,” the Netflix chief executive, Reed Hastings, said late Wednesday. “Because we are launching in the second half of the year I don’t think we could do a second country this year.”
Mr. Hastings declined to identify the market but hinted at how a roll-out might happen.
After the United States, “the big market for Hollywood content Europe,” he said. “Third is Asia. Fourth is the rest of the world. Canada is and was an option. It’s sort of international-lite.”
Since starting its U.S. streaming service in 2007, Netflix has focused on capitalizing on the prevalence of devices like Blu-ray DVD players, gaming consoles and PCs. Mr. Hastings said the international service would start the same way.
“The biggest installed base is laptops; they are pretty ubiquitous,” Mr. Hastings said when asked what user population the new service would target. Video game consoles would be the focus in the most advanced countries, he said.
Mr. Hastings said Netflix content managers were making separate deals for the international territory leading up to the start, which he would talk about publicly in September or October. But he gave no word of how large the title selection would be.
Nor would he comment on whether the company faced any major competition in the new market, but indications were that Netflix expected little resistance to its initial foray. Mr. Hastings said he expected the new service to be compatible with forecasts for an 11 percent operating margin globally.
Netflix was the pioneer of online movie rentals and a fast-growing darling of technology investors when it shut down its British DVD-by-mail service weeks before its 2004 start to respond to a challenge by Blockbuster in the United States and rumors that Amazon.com would enter the space.
The company lost about $10 million from the aborted endeavor as well as short-term hopes for easy subscriber growth fueled by access to international markets.
After a grueling price war that lasted years and seriously wounded Blockbuster, Netflix emerged stronger and bigger with a streaming option that was less expensive and easier to deploy abroad.
Movie Gallery was collateral damage in the battle. Once the second-largest store-based rental chain in the United States, Movie Gallery lost market share and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2007. Movie Gallery is preparing to file again, according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
“The big difference is we were entering with DVDs only” in 2004, Mr. Hastings said. Now, he said, “it’s streaming only. That’s a big difference — no warehouses, no integration with the Royal Mail,” the British postal service. Another difference: Netflix’s revenue has grown fourfold, to a projected $2 billion this year from $501 million in 2004. “We are a lot bigger when we enter and streaming means less operational complexity — not having to figure out the mail for each country,” Mr. Hastings said.
Reuters
www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/technology/companies/29netflix.html
Enjoy it :-) its pretty good for the cheap price...
