A new research study has said that Australia will only deliver 350,000 paying subscribers this year, this is a far stretch from the one million plus forecast by Roy Morgan Research. There is also speculation that the US content provider is looking to launch a pre paid Netflix card.
Digital TV Research’s Global OTT TV & Video Forecasts report estimates that Netflix will have 69.90 million paying subscribers by end-2015, up by 28 per cent from 54.48 million at end-2014.
International paying subs will reach 26.36 million by end-2015 – up by 9.58 million (or by 57 per cent) at end-2014. While the service’s home US market will provide the majority, with 43.5 million, other intermational markets set to boost numbers significantly include the UK with 4.9 million, Canada with 3.9 million and Brazil with 3.4 million.
Australia has been forecast to deliver 350,000 subscribers.
A Foxtel executive told ChannelNews “This is more like the numbers we forecast after all the free’s had been exhausted”.
In the UK Netflix has started selling pre-paid gift cards with retailers such as JB Hi Fi and Optus keen to roll out the same service in Australia.
The top-up card allows people to send a pre-paid amount of credit to use on the hugely successful streaming service.
However – paying with a pre-paid card does not require a regular monthly subscription to Netflix.
Instead the card simply buys time on the on-demand video service. Its essentially a Netflix pre-payment metre.
Netflix Cards can be topped up too, which essentially transforms the scheme into a pay-as-you-go payment system for Netflix.
The new pre-paid cards if lanched in Australia would start at $50 and go up to $100.
