In an effort to remain the world’s largest streaming service against stiff competition from the likes of Comast, Hulu, and Amazon; Netflix is developing a feature that will allow subscribers to download certain content for viewing while offline. Penthera COO and industry insider, Dan Taitz, dropped the knowledge regarding the new feature and the shift in direction for Netflix’s business landscape recently with lightreading.com.
“We know from our sources within the industry that Netflix is going to launch this product. My expectation is that by the end of the year Netflix will be launching download-to-go as an option for their customers,” said Taitz according to lightreading.com.
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Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst Dan Rayburn confirmed the news of the upcoming feature stating, “It’s a natural progression for Netflix to want to have some of their content available for consumers to watch offline, and we’ve been hearing for months now that they are in fact going to roll something out soon.”
Netflix has been looking to make huge changes recently in an effort to boost revenues in the increasingly competitive industry. To combat the rising competition, the company has indicated that there will be a price increase for all current subscribers up to $9.99 month. While the price increase will reportedly cost Netflix somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 customers; they will be raking in nearly $520 million more in revenues just by increasing the price.
The price increase will be in effect this year, even though there is nearly 40% less content available than there was four years ago in 2012. The focus has been placed upon providing quality content, such as some of these new titles becoming available July 1, instead of an overwhelmingly vast number of titles.
Another idea Netflix has been toying around with is placing advertisements on their movies and shows. While some of Netflix’s competition places advertisements on their content already, one study revealed that nearly 74% of people would rather cancel their subscription than see ads placed on their favorite streaming service.
What do you think? Would you like to see Netflix providing content available for offline viewing?
