Image Source: The Hindu
Netflix has cut prices in over 30 countries, so more people will sign up.
Asia, Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East are where prices have decreased.
People are cutting back on spending because the cost of living is going up, and Netflix is getting more competition from other services.
A representative for the company told the BBC that members have never had more ways to have fun.
Subscription fees have decreased in some countries, like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Croatia, Venezuela, Kenya, and Iran.
Some plans’ prices will decrease, and sometimes the subscription cost will drop by half.
The company didn’t say prices had gone down in the UK or the US.
“We are always seeking ways to help our members out. We can confirm that we are changing the prices of our plans in some countries, “a Netflix spokesperson said.
After the story was written up in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the company’s shares in New York ended the day 3.4% lower.
Netflix is available in over 190 countries, and other streaming services like Amazon, HBO, and Disney have become a bigger threat.
Last year, the company cut hundreds of jobs and released a cheaper streaming option with ads to increase its share of the growing streaming market.
Greg Peters, also co-CEO of Netflix, told the company in January how to get more subscribers.
Mr. Peters said, “We want to make that range even wider because we want to serve more members worldwide and try to offer the right value at each price point.”
Sharing subscriptions also get people in trouble with the company.
Early this month, Netflix made sharing passwords harder for people in more countries. Also, if customers want to share their subscriptions with friends and family who don’t live with them, they have to pay an extra fee.
Netflix said last summer that it lost almost a million subscribers between April and the end of June as more people stopped using the service.
But in January, the company said that by the end of 2022, the number of subscribers would have gone up.
Netflix makes it harder in more countries to share passwords
Netflix is making it harder for people in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain to share passwords.
In these countries, customers who want to share their subscriptions with friends and family who don’t live with them must pay an extra fee.
The change comes after sharing passwords was made illegal in South America. However, it will be working in the UK by the end of March.
Netflix thinks that accounts are shared by about 100 million people worldwide.
Netflix said that losing money from shared accounts made it harder for the company to put money into new shows. But in the next few months, it wants to use the new method in more countries.
A blog post on Wednesday said that the streamer has been trying different ways to deal with this problem in Latin America for the past year and is now ready to use them more widely in the coming months, starting with Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain.
Up until now, it was easy for subscribers to share their login and password with people outside their homes.
When Netflix tweeted in 2017 that “Love is sharing a password,” it seemed like the company was fine with it.
But Netflix is trying to make more money because there is more competition in the streaming market, and customers are cutting back on subscriptions because the cost of living is going up.
The company said that letting multiple people in the same house use the same account had “caused confusion” about when and how people could share.
It said that members in Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal now have to set up a “primary location” for their account and decide who can access it.
It said members could still watch Netflix while traveling on their own devices or by logging in somewhere else, like a hotel.
The blog said Canadian subscribers could pay CAD$7.99 (£4.92) to add another member as a “sub-account.”
The same NZ$7.99 (£4.17) fee would be charged in New Zealand. For a sub-account, Portugal would charge €3.99 (£3.54), while Spain would charge €5.99 (£5.32).
Gregory Peters, who is Netflix’s chief operating officer, said last month that no one would like the changes and that investors should expect some cancellations.
He said that the company would make up for those losses over time.
In the first half of 2022, fewer and fewer people signed up for Netflix. Because of this, hundreds of jobs were lost, and prices were raised to cover the cost of living.
Read Also: Netflix founder steps down as co-CEO
But the number of users rose by 7.66 million in the last three months of 2022, more than the company had expected. This brought the number of paid subscribers worldwide to nearly 231 million.
In November, it gave people in 12 countries, including most of Europe, the UK, and the US, a cheaper option paid for by ads.
