After more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, Netflix has been suffering a drop in subscriber numbers in 2022. As seen in the chart at https://lnkd.in/eyQEuMxZ, the world’s largest video streaming service ended the second quarter with 220.7 million paid memberships, down almost one million from the previous quarter, when a smaller loss of around 200,000 paying customers had occurred.
“The big COVID boost to streaming obscured the picture until recently,” the company wrote in its Q1 letter to shareholders, saying it clouded its view of “growth headwinds” faced by the streaming leader. In Q2, Netflix added that it continued to improve its product, content and marketing and was also looking to better monetize its big audience, hinting at a password-sharing crackdown that is currently being rolled out. In Q3, Netflix is projecting subscriber numbers will grow again.
Almost a million subscribers fled Netflix in the second quarter, roughly half the number the beleaguered streaming giant had forewarned investors about, but still the most significant desertion in its history. Netflix logged revenue growth of 9% for the quarter, bolstered by the blockbuster success of its most-watched series “Stranger Things.” It also saw tangible improvement in the Asia-Pacific region, adding 1.1 million payers for the quarter. The U.S. and Canada accounted for the largest amount of cancellations with 1.3 million abandoning the service.
