Netflix is gearing up for war as the the entertainment company on Monday made an announcement that it will increase its budget from $6 to $8 billion on shows and movies by 2018.
Netflix has noticed that its tech rivals like Amazon, Facebook and Apple are investing huge sums into entertainment and are looking into getting original content onto their services.
“We have a good head start, but our job is to improve Netflix (NFLX, Tech30) as rapidly as possible … to stay ahead of the competition in the decades to come,” the company said in its earnings release Monday.
The company is on a warpath and their chief content officer, Ted Sarandos made it clear when he said on an earnings call Monday that the company plans to release “about 80” films next year.
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Some media partners aren’t happy with Netflix’s current drive with probably some enemies being made on the way but entertainment giant pushes on.
The company added more than 5 million new members in the third quarter, with the vast majority of them coming from international markets. It now has 109 million subscribers, up from 86 million in the same quarter a year ago.
Earlier this month, Netflix announced plans to raise prices on its standard and premium streaming subscription services. The change, set to go into effect later this year, will push the monthly cost of its most popular plan from $9.99 to $10.99.
The new changes however, haven’t been without its challenges as media companies like Disney are threatening remove their content from Netflix and launch their own streaming service.
Despite a few strangles here and there, Netflix forecasts a great fourth quarter ahead as it expects to add more than 6 million members worldwide.
During the quarter, Netflix also acquired a comic book publisher with the goal of using it to develop new films and series. The deal was the first acquisition in Netflix’s history, but on the call executives sounded open to similar buys.
Investor confidence in Netflix remains high. The stock topped $200 for the first time last week, and was up as much as 2% in after hours trading Monday following the earnings report.
Well, for all the movie and TV show lovers out there, Netflix is here to stay and it ain’t giving up on its expansion campaign to bring more entertainment on to the table.
Author: Allan Bangirana
Allan Bangirana has a taste for all kinds of topics and usually writes about tech, entertainment, sports and community projects that make a difference in society.
He writes for Newslibre and Spur Magazine. He is also the co-founder of the Innovware project and a freelance consultant passionate about technology and web.
