Remember the time when watching a movie means actually going out to the theater? Or wanting to watch a DVD means going out to your local Blockbusters? The good ol’ days. But times have changed. Technology has advanced to make everything extremely convenient that even a grandma is tech savvy and babies using tablets.I remember when Netflix ($NFLX) first started with the idea of getting movies mailed to you directly and you can mail it back at anytime. And the best part was that it only cost $7 a month. It was very convenient at the time and I had access to thousands of movies. I used Netflix for a few months until I’ve watched most of the movies that I liked. Then I decided to cancel the subscription since it wasn’t appealing to me anymore. At that point in time, the internet has grown and streaming videos were the norm. That’s also the time when Netflix started losing market share.
But Netflix fought back. They decided to start offering streaming videos and different pricing plans which starts at $8 a month now. Netflix even started making their own in-house series like House of Cards, Marco Polo, Orange Is the New Black, etc. I personally never signed up for Netflix after the DVD mailing era but it is nice to see Netflix improving on their services. I heard that Netflix’s in-house series are a hit with many fan followings but it just isn’t the genre that I usually watch (scifi/action).
As an investor, I think Netflix has been steadily advancing their services but it’s in a crowded sea of streaming services. It’s nice that Netflix is producing in-house series and I do hope they continue on that line to differentiate themselves with the other streaming services out there. It would be nice if Netflix would offer up a live streaming world news/weather “channel”. It would be good for Netflix to expand into providing live news since they already have a production studio on hand.
