“We don’t think this consolidation has affected our growth much, if at all,” said Netflix, adding that it doesn’t see a need to make similarly sized acquisitions to stay competitive.
Disney + more than doubled its share of demand interest in the second quarter compared to last year, and according to Parrot, Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV + and HBO Max are also winning.
Even as newer entrants ditched Netflix’s longstanding grip, the company has downplayed competition concerns. In their letter to shareholders it was stated that the industry as a whole was “still at the very beginning” of the transition from traditional pay TV to streaming.
“We are confident that we have a long way to go for growth,” said Netflix. “As we improve our service, our goal is to keep increasing our percentage of screen time in the US and around the world.”
In April, Reed Hastings, co-head of Netflix, dismissed the competition as a contender for the Netflix throne. When investors asked him why the company missed its first quarter expectations for new customer acquisition, he said, “Of course we ask, ‘Well, wait a minute, are we sure this isn’t competition?'”
“We really went through all the data and looked at different regions where new competitors are coming in but not coming in,” he continued. “And we just can’t see any difference in our relative growth in these regions, which makes us confident.”
“We’ve been competing with Amazon Prime for 13 years and Hulu for 14 years,” he added. “Even with linear television, it has always been very competitive. So there is no real change that we can see in the competitive environment. It has always been high and remains high. “