Netflix Subscribers On Pace to Outnumber Cable Customers by End of Year, Data Reveals
When will Netflix subscribers overtake cable subscribers? In the US, that answer could be as soon as this year.
At Techvibes we have been reporting for years on the trend of cord cutting—cancelling traditional television packages in favor of emerging stream-on-demand alternatives like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
But cable’s biggest threat by far remains Netflix. The video streaming service earned $2.3 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter, ahead of analyst forecasts—and gained 370,000 new subscribers in the US and 3.6 million globally, far beyond the company’s own guidance of 2.3 million.
According to data from Samuel W Bennett’s Get Data, Netflix is on pace to reach and possibly even surpass cable subscribers in the US by the end of 2016. (Comcast, whose television subscriber count has been stagnant for years, is represented in yellow.)
Canadians are also ditching cable at aggressive rates. In 2015, nearly 200,000 Canadians ditched cable television. That’s a huge increase from 2014, when barely 100,000 cut the cord, according to data from the quarterly reports of telecommunications providers and Convergence Consulting Group.
Half of Canadians have tried out an alternative video service recently, according to the J.D. Power 2016 Canadian Television Provider Customer TV/ISP Satisfaction Study. 67% used Netflix.
During peak Internet usage hours, Netflix content can account for more than one-third of traffic in Canada.
