Netflix will wind down its DVD business, which it launched a quarter of a century ago and paved the way for streaming, later this year.
In its latest set of results, the company says it will be shipping out its final DVDs on September 29.
Netflix also says it is delaying the rollout its “paid sharing” option despite being pleased with the results of its Q1 launches in Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal. It says it could have been launched broadly in Q1 – it was launched in 12 markets in February – but will now be so in the second quarter.
Netflix ended Q1 with a total of 232.50 million global streaming paid memberships, gaining 1.75 million in the quarter. This represented a yea-on-year increase of 4.9% and contrasted with Q1 2022, when the company lost 200,000 subscribers.
Netflix’s revenues in Q1 amounted to $8,162 million (+3.7% year-on-year) and its net income was $1,305 million.
Commenting on its new ad plans, the company notes that engagement on its ads tier is above its initial expectations and, as expected, there’s been very little switching from its standard and premium plans. Also, thanks to its most recent set of licensing deals, our ad-supported plan now has on average around 95% content parity globally (by viewing) with ads-free plans, including all the latest Netflix shows and movies.
Netflix adds that this month it will upgrade the feature set of its ads plan to include 1080p versus 720p video quality and two concurrent streams in all 12 ads markets, starting with Canada and Spain on April 18.
