Surprise in the sector of content platforms on demand. And it is that a historical event has occurred: Netflix has lost customers for the first time in its history. In this way, during the first quarter of 2022, the VOD service has suffered a loss of 200,000 subscribers worldwide. And beware, your expectations are not at all flattering: Netflix estimates that it will lose up to 2 million subscribers in the second quarter.
“ANDOur revenue growth has slowed considerably“, acknowledges Netflix in its letter to shareholders that you have sent. “Covid clouded the picture by significantly increasing our growth in 2020, leading us to believe that most of our growth slowdown in 2021 was due to the Covid pull«. In this way, although it is true that Netflix ended the quarter with approximately 222 million users, which positions the platform as the service with the highest number of subscribers, the drop has been surprising. Or not…
Why is Netflix losing customers?
Although Netflix is the largest VOD platform worldwide, has to deal with a series of problems that have been dragging on for a long time, but to this we must add the new problems. For example, in January Netflix raised the price of its rates again. A movement in which it hides itself by saying that income must be increased to continue betting on its own productions and further expand its catalog.
And here is your first big problem: Netflix has a huge catalog of movies, series and documentaries, but proportionally speaking it has very little quality content. Of course there is cult content, such as Stranger Things or La casa de papel to give an example, but no one can deny that many of the available movies and series are of no interest to most users
On the other hand, at the time we already told you that Netflix was playing it by threatening to ban account sharing if you don’t pay an extra. First they directly banned it, sending notifications to users who shared their account to finally announce a new rate in which an extra fee would be paid for sharing an account. And this did not please their customers at all.
There are two compelling reasons that have caused this bleeding of customers. And considering that next quarter they expect to lose another 2 million subscribersThe picture doesn’t look too good.
What Netflix should do to regain trust
“Our plan is to accelerate audience and revenue growth by continuing to improve all aspects of Netflix, particularly the quality of our programming and recommendations, which our members value most.Netflix says in its results letter. «In terms of content, we are redoubling our commitment to story development and creative excellence«.
$NFLX -25% pic.twitter.com/ChqjpC0Qxr
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 19, 2022
The company needs a turn of the wheel if it wants to improve. Notably Netflix shares have plunged after the announcement, losing 25% of its value. And this is not a good sign at all. If you want to regain confidence, on the one hand you should consider the content you offer and start making better investments instead of buying content of very low quality by weight.
On the other hand, that harassment and takedown of shared accounts should end. Today Netflix is by far the most expensive platform if you want to enjoy content in 4K, so in this aspect they should consider a turn of the wheel if they want to recover lost subscribers.
Netflix has a lot of wiggle roomDisney + today has 133 million subscribers, but better not to rest on your laurels because a new Nokia case may happen, in which a company that believed itself to be the leader in its sector ends up in oblivion for, precisely, overconfident…
