Netflix flipped its switch on in 130 new countries during a keynote speech at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Wednesday morning. With this launch, consumers around the world – from Singapore to St Petersburg, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo – will be able to enjoy TV shows and movies simultaneously.
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That means the service can now be accessed in nearly every country in the world besides China.
With its latest move, Netflix is now available in about 190 countries. No more frustration. Just Netflix … wherever you are in the world.
In a report to shareholders released October 14, Hastings, along with David Wells, CFO, said the company’s new-member forecast for the USA proved too high.
The expansion involved adding services in Arabic, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese to the 17 languages it already supports.
Shares of the company, whose popular shows include “House of Cards”, “Orange Is The New Black” and “Narcos”, rose 5.5 percent to $113.60 in afternoon trading.
The Los Gatos, California, company has helped bring about a big shift in how and when we watch videos, resulting in more binge-watching of series and more people leaving their cable subscriptions for streaming services.
In all, Netflix expected to finish 2015 at about 44.83 million subscribers, up only slightly from 39.11 million at the end of 2014.
“The shows [audiences] want to watch are built on a business model they do not understand, and they do not care”, he said.
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Netflix has already crossed off the biggest item on its New Year’s list of resolutions. It also won’t be available in Crimea, North Korea and Syria due to US government restrictions on American companies. With movies, documentaries and other original content factored in, the company will be producing 600 hours of content, according to Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. A video showcasing Netflix original content is available here.
