This is also significantly below the 3.3 million members that Netflix added in the same period of past year.
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In Netflix’s letter to shareholders, CEO Reed Hastings stated that “Netflix membership grew by 1.7 million members in Q2, finishing with over 83 million members”.
Netflix Inc (NFLX) said it added fewer video streaming subscribers than expected from April through June as customers canceled the service ahead of a price increase, and the company’s shares fell 16 percent.
In Asia, Netflix competes with rivals that offer more Asian content, including Iflix and Viu, which position themselves as more competitively priced local challenger brands.
The problem is that the company isn’t adding new subscribers as rapidly as investors would like.
Earlier this year, Netflix announced plans to gradually up the price for long-time subscribers from $7.99 to $9.99.
Although, Netflix was careful with the price hikes and moved more cautiously this time after its previous fiasco but that too did not keep the consumers from showing their dissatisfaction with the price increase. Netflix reported second quarter revenues of $2.11 billion which was in line with analyst expectations.
The company had forecast in April that subscriptions would increase by 500,000 in the United States and 2 million internationally in the second quarter.
Second, Hastings said that it likely wasn’t because of market saturation, since that would involve a hit to how many people were signing up for Netflix, versus what the company actually saw, which was a rise in cancellations. However, but “ungrandfarthering”, Netflix has taken this perk away from its original customers, forcing them to pay the same as new subscribers. “It’s a necessary phase for us to get through”, Hastings said during his conference call with analysts.
Back in 2014, Netflix raises prices for new members on its standard monthly plan, but existing members had their prices locked in for another two years, after which they would be subjected to the going rate.
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“Our view, however, is that we are all growing primarily against linear TV hours and that competition did not contribute materially to our miss in Q2”, the company said in a statement that accompanied its financial results.
