The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the number of subscribers to Netflix, an American online video service (OTT) company, exceeded 200 million last year.
Netflix announced that the number of subscribers as of the end of last year was 23.7 million, an increase of 8.5 million during the fourth quarter alone.
As a result, Netflix subscribers exceeded 100 million in the third quarter of 2017, and then doubled again in three years. The number of subscribers increased in one year last year was 37 million, the highest ever.
Netflix’s growth last year was also attributed to the increased demand for streaming services as people spend more time at home in the aftermath of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19).
In addition to Netflix, subscribers to rival OTT companies such as Walt Disney’s’Disney+’ and Warner Media’s’HBO Max’ also increased.
When looking at the number of Netflix subscription increases in the fourth quarter of last year, by region, North American subscribers such as the US and Canada reached 860,000, compared to 2 million in Asia. In addition, South America increased by 1.2 million and Europe, Middle East and Africa increased by 4.5 million.
Thanks to this, Netflix’s fourth quarter sales were $6.64 billion, up from the same period last year ($5.45 billion).
While Asia has emerged as the second largest region leading Netflix’s growth, Netflix cited the expansion of investment in Korean content as the background.
Netflix has invested about 770 billion won in Korean content from 2015 to the present. It also emphasized the propaganda of the Korean original series’Sweet Home’, which was introduced in December last year. This work is highly acclaimed as a Korean-style creature play, and it was counted that 22 million paid subscribers around the world watched it in the first four weeks after the work was released. yunhap news
Gyeongsang Ilbo, KSILBO