The Is How Many Subscribers Netflix Has Worldwide

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 21, 10:22AM EDT

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The Is How Many Subscribers Netflix Has Worldwide — © stockcatalog / Flickr

Netflix, which once sent people film DVDs through the mail as its primary business, was the pioneer of streaming premium content. It started the changeover to streaming in 2007. Despite challenges from huge rivals, Netflix has kept its spot as the largest company in the industry based on total subscriptions.

First among the companies that have taken a run at Netflix is Amazon.com. It bundles its streaming service with its Prime subscription product, which also offers free shipping of goods bought at Amazon.com and special deals for its members.

The most successful of the recent streaming start-ups is Disney+. Less than two years old, it has 100 million subscribers and is projected to reach 230 million to 260 million by 2024. Much of this is expected to come from international expansion. Among Disney’s advantages is that it has the Disney studio library and all the movies from Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars.

The industry has two other relatively new heavyweights that want a piece of the industry. These are Apple, with its new Apple TV+ service, and AT&T with its HBO Max service.
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Among the primary weapons all these streaming services have deployed is original content. Each makes full-length TV series and feature films that are exclusively available on their service. The aggregate costs to produce these have reached hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Netflix just announced its first-quarter financial results. Revenue rose 24% from the same quarter a year ago to $7.2 billion. Net income rose from $709 million to $1.71 billion. Subscriptions rose very modestly to 207.64 million worldwide. Netflix generally compares this figure to the immediately prior quarter (the fourth quarter of 2020 in this case), when the number was 203.66 million.

Some analysts who follow Netflix say the slow rise is a sign that fewer people will watch streaming services in their homes when the pandemic ends. Some of these subscribers were “captive” because they could not go to movie theaters or socialize with friends and family. Is this true? Perhaps. However, 207.64 million is still a large number, and enough to keep Netflix in the lead.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.