Netflix price increases to be gradual, but still happening

Perhaps not the best PR statement you want to release when your competitor has just released their own streaming service but Neflix will slow down how quick it increases pricing in May

During an investor conference on Monday (April 18), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the increase would now roll out

It’s going slowly over the year, rather than mostly in May”.
“[It’s] so we can learn as we go,”

he explained.

Netflix previously said a price freeze where past subscriptions stayed at $7.99 per month would come to an end next month when an increased charge of $9.99 would be instituted for everyone on the standard HD subscription.

That announcement was made just before Netflix’s quarterly estimates fell short of investor predictions, sending shares down 10% in after-hours trading.

Netflix says it added 6.7 million new subscribers last quarter – that’s 2.2 million in the US and 4.5 million abroad.
While analysts predicted 4 million new subscribers for the current quarter, Netflix has downgraded expectations to 2.5 million.

On a side note the battle between Netflix and regionless viewing is still ongoing but one wonders if Netflix might let that lie a little just to get the numbers back up.

 

Amazon doesn’t have this problem as for Prime US content you explicity need a prime US account but that’s a moot point as their streaming service is only for US and Canadian residents for now.