“Netflix is still the No. 1 subscription streaming service in the U.S., according to a new report from eMarketer, but rivals, including Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, are starting to cut into its market share,” Sarah Perez reports for TechCrunch.
The analyst firm forecasts 182.5 million U.S. consumers will subscribe to over-the-top streaming services this year, or 53.3% of the population. Netflix is still the top choice here, with 158.8 million viewers in 2019, and it is continuing to grow… But Netflix is no longer the only option for streaming video these days. Back in 2014, it had 90% of the market. In 2019, its share will have shrunk to 87%.
This decline in market share is attributed to the rise of rival services, like Hulu and Prime Video. Hulu, for example, is estimated to reach 75.8 million U.S. viewers this year, or 41.5% of subscription service users… Prime Video, meanwhile will remain the second-largest subscription over-the-top video provider in the U.S. in 2019, the report says, with 96.5 million viewers.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is getting into this market just in time (a year earlier, at least, would have been better), as competition is really starting to heat up in the over-the-top streaming services market.
Companies won’t relish the prospect of entering the cord-cutters’ market with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ (which includes the ad-supported version of Hulu), Apple TV+, and live over-the-top services like Sony’s PlayStation Vue already having nabbed subscribers. At some point, the total costs all of these services combined approach the cable/satellite bill that cord-cutters were trying to escape in the first place. Very soon, there will be precious little room for new TV/movie subscription services.
I don’t know about market share percentage but because Netflix has been spending so much money on content, it’s not a very profitable company. Only subscriber base growth makes it valuable to Wall Street. With so much competition out there now, I don’t see how Netflix can maintain that growth that Wall Street loves so much. With Netflix spending so much money on content and now losing a lot of popular content from Marvel and Disney, I would think there would be quite a number of consumers switching to other streaming services just to test the waters.
Netflix only locks in subscribers for a month so there may be little loyalty. At least Amazon Prime subscribers are usually locked in for a year. I personally don’t think Netflix is going to hold its FANG level value and I think a lot of greedy big investors are going to be dumping Netflix stock. Why would big investors stay with Netflix if there are little profits and little growth? I’m sure they won’t stay with Netflix. I’m curious to see how long Netflix remains part of FANG. I give it about a year and I’m willing to bet Netflix is no longer a bulletproof FANG stock.