The streaming giant has predicted it will lose another two million in the next three months.
For the first time in over a decade, Netflix has begun to lose subscribers.
In a letter to its subscribers (as shared by Verge), the streaming service stated that its revenue growth has slowed considerably.
“Covid clouded the picture by significantly increasing our growth in 2020, leading us to believe that most of our slowing growth in 2021 was due to the Covid pull forward,” the letter read.
Another big reason for these losses was the recent price increase, which saw Netflix lose around 600,000 subscribers in the US and Canada alone, but Netflix said that this loss “is tracking in-line with our expectations”.
There was also the suspension of services in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, which accounted for the loss of another 700,000 subscribers.
This would indicate that there were still well over one million new subscribers to Netflix in the first three months of the year, but combined, the figure is still less than the losses the streaming service has incurred across January, February and March.
Netflix still has around 222 million subscribers worldwide, but those numbers are finally beginning to plateau, while both Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ continue to grow and catch up.
One of the ways that Netflix plan on tackling this issue is by cracking down on shared passwords between households.
Netflix estimates that there are as many as 100 million households using the service from a shared password, with Netflix saying that, as a result, “it’s harder to grow membership in many markets”.
Netflix has already begun a crackdown on shared passwords in three markets – Chile, Peru and Costa Rica – and commenting on the expansion of this crackdown, Netflix said the following:
“This is a big opportunity as these households are already watching Netflix and enjoying our service. Sharing likely helped fuel our growth by getting more people using and enjoying Netflix. And we’ve always tried to make sharing within a member’s household easy, with features like profiles and multiple streams. While these have been very popular, they’ve created confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared with other households.”
So if you’re currently using a Netflix account belonging to someone you don’t actually live in the same home as, those days could well be numbered…
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