Best of the Week: Has subscription streaming peaked, just as connected TV comes through?
Welcome to Unmade, written in the freezing UK while you were sleeping. Only nine days before I head back to Australia, so long as I manage to avoid catching you know what.
Happy National Polka Dot Day.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell. RIP, big guy.
Finally connecting
Back when I started writing about media two decades ago there was an ongoing theme. Whichever magazine or website I wrote for at the time always had the same question: Would this be the year of mobile? As we segued from WAP (not that one) to 3G and eventually to 4G, the year of mobile kept being postponed.
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Hi Tim.
You wrote “Netflix predicts that it will only grow its subscriber numbers by 2.5m in this quarter, on top of its existing 221.84m paying memberships up to the end of December. That will be growth of just 2.5 per cent.”
Have I misread or misunderstood? Isn’t a 2.5m increase on 221.48m 1.1% growth?
Hi John,
Thanks very much for the question. You are correct (as you usually are).
I’ve now corrected it in the article above.
I skipped a line when I was reading the table. In fact the predicted growth is 2.5m subscribers on the previous quarter, not 2.5%. And the 8% number I refer to is the predicted year-on-year growth for the quarter (up from 207.64m in Q1 2021).
Cheers,
Tim
You are correct about Google’s Chromecast being buggy. Having stuck with one for a couple of years, I finally switched over to a generic Android TV box and immediately regretted not making the change earlier. The seamless experience I have now is a million miles from the pain of using Google’s product.
I’m now firmly of the opinion that Chromecast is just the latest manifestation of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
I’m glad you said that Gavin. I was starting to wonder whether I was the only person who seemed to be continuously unplugging the device (sometimes several times a day) to make it go on talking to my wifi.
These days my Chrome Cast lives in a desk drawer.
Cheers,
Tim