Netflix Planning Euro Launch in 2012 | Home Media Magazine #infdist

Netflix Planning Euro Launch in 2012

18 Jul, 2011 By: Erik Gruenwedel

Aggressive expansion/price increase underscores company’s intent at “killing off” disc rental ASAP, analysts say.

Netflix is quietly laying the ground work for expansion into Spain and the United Kingdom by the first quarter of 2012, according to a report citing foreign film distributors.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix, which recently said it would launch streaming service to 43 Latin America countries, including Mexico and the Caribbean by the end of the year, has long intimated expansion of streaming service across the Atlantic, according to an investor letter in April and comments by CEO Reed Hastings at various fiscal presentations.

Expansion into Europe – once considered Netflix’s first foreign venture until it bowed service in Canada last summer – appeared cut off at the pass earlier this year after Amazon bought the remaining interest in Lovefilm – the United Kingdom’s largest by-mail rental disc and streaming service. Indeed, Lovefilm has reportedly increased staffing by 20% in its own expansion efforts into Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, according to Variety, which first reported Netflix’s Euro invasion.

Such activity probably won’t deter Netflix, which has always considered Amazon (and less so Google) as its major competitor going forward due to the online retail behemoth’s strong physical and digital sellthrough business.

Meanwhile, launching streaming service in Spain is considered less of a challenge due to a dearth of competing services in the country and that Netflix’s establishment of a Spanish-language database and digital network in Latin America could easily be expanded into Western Europe’s largest geographical country.

via homemediamagazine.com

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