Netflix has announced huge growth in the second financial quarter, as figures show the online streaming service is dominating the market in Australia after launching in March.
Netflix had revenue of $1.64 billion for the financial quarter, with 3.3 million new subscribers. After the announcement, Netflix shares rose by 10%. The growth was nearly double on last year’s figures.
They’re better than expected results for the online video streaming giant, which now has more than 65 million customers worldwide.
Much of the growth can be attributed to Netflix’s expansion outside of the US, with international revenue growing by 48% year-on-year.
The quarterly report states that the company’s global customers are “growing at a rapid pace”, and identifies Australia as one of the main contributors to this.
“We did not add additional markets in Q2 but saw continued improvement across existing markets, including a full quarter of additions from our successful March 24, 2015 launch in Australia/New Zealand,” the report says.
About 2.4 million of the new subscribers came from outside of the US, and it seems a large chunk of these were from Australia. This marked the first full quarter to include Australia and New Zealand.
Although Netflix wouldn’t give StartupSmart any specific numbers in terms of Australia, they did say they’re happy with how the service has been received here.
“Whilst we don’t disclose subscriber figures for specific countries, we’re very pleased with how things are going in Australia and New Zealand, and the reception the service has received since the launch in March,” a Netflix Australia spokesperson says.
Figures released by Roy Morgan Research show Netflix is dominating the Australian online streaming market, and is head and shoulders above competitors like Stan and Presto.
Netflix Australia also declined to comment on how accurate these figures are.
The research, from a sample size of 2208 Australians aged 14 and over, says Netflix Australia now has over 1.5 million subscribers in over half a million households, after launching in March.
(Roy Morgan Research table)
According to Roy Morgan, this is ten times more than the competition, with its research showing Presto has about 97,000 users, and Stan an estimated 91,000.
These stats show Netflix Australia grew by 40% in June alone.
There seems to some cross-over between streaming services, with the research showing up to half of all Stan, Quickflix or Presto subscribers are also Netflix customers.
Netflix attributes much of its growth to its ever-growing range of original programming, including Marvel’s Daredevil, Sense8, season 3 of Orange is the New Black, and Grace and Frankie.
The company is going to expand further across the world in the next year, with plans to roll out in Japan and Spain in the third quarter, and Italy and Portugal in the fourth quarter.
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Denham Sadler is a former editor of StartupSmart. He was previously a journalist at the publication and has worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, the Saturday Paper and the ABC. In his spare time he likes puns and jaffles.
