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Tech

Netflix Raises Prices Of Standard and Premium Packages in the U.S

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Introduction:

Netflix made a great profit since the lockdown as people had been stuck in their homes due to the coronavirus.

However, as the competition is increasing in the market, Netflix announced that it is raising the prices of its standard and premium packages.

They announced that the basic plan will remain at its original price that is of $9. But the price of the standard package has been increased from $13 to $14 a month while the price of the premium package has been increased from $16 to $18 per month.

The customers that have joined it or are planning to join will have to give the updated fees. The users that already have an account will pay the fees in their next billing cycle.

Netflix raised its prices back in 2019:

The last time when Netflix raised its prices was back in January 2019 and people were expecting this to happen sooner or later.

Netflix is trying to increase the prices country by country so that their net income isn’t affected globally. Previously, they announced the change in prices in Canada, and now it’s the USA.

Increased competition:

A few years ago, when Netflix started its major competitor was Hulu in the streaming market. However, today there are many other competitors in the market which include YouTube and many other video games.

The competition is so high that in the U.S alone. Because users have many options like TikTok, Peacock, Disney Plus, HBO Max, etc. They have planned to up their game and standards so that their customers don’t go for the latter options.

Big investments cause higher prices:

Netflix is investing heavily in producing better content for their customers. But eventually, all these efforts are making the cost high and everyone is aware of it.

Analyst Ross Benes, an eMarketer says,”Netflix is still underpriced than most of its competitors”. He also added that people get “a lot of value for not a whole lot of money.”

The officials believe that these factors will make Netflix a more central platform for streaming movies and seasons.

Due to the pandemic, people can give an extra dollar or two for getting excellent services that Netflix provides to its users.

Co-Ceo of Netflix, Reed Hastings says that he is fine with losing some customers as they will eventually gain more customers due to the perks and benefits provided by Netflix.

Conclusion:

The aim of the company is to create many high-quality hits so that once people join the platform, they won’t sway to any other services in the market.

Gadgets

Netflix inks first-look deal with Dark Horse Entertainment and partners with OnePlus

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Image by Jade87 from Pixabay

Ubiquitous global streaming platform Netflix announced on 9 May that it had closed a “first-look” deal with Dark Horse Entertainment, the motion picture and television production arm of American comic book publishing company Dark Horse Comics.

The deal gives Netflix a first look at Dark Horse’s IP for both film and TV, and the companies said they had already started exploring future projects with Dark Horse Entertainment’s Mike Richardson, Keith Goldberg and Paul Schwake signed on to produce.

Netflix and Dark Horse have previously collaborated on hit action-comedy series The Umbrella Academy, which was recently renewed for a second season, as well as Jonas Åkerlund’s feature film Polar. Exact details of any projects currently on the slate for the two companies are still being kept strictly under wraps.

A first-deal is a contract between the two parties that gives Netflix first rights to consider a production by Dark Horse Entertainment for production and/or distribution by giving financial support to the project during the development period. So they essentially get first dibs on anything Dark Horse wants to produce but also reserve the right not to pick up anything they don’t fully support.

“We are very excited about this new arrangement with the talented people at Netflix,” Mike Richardson, Dark Horse Entertainment’s President and Founder, said in a statement. “We have strong creative relationships as well as a large content library to work with and, as we have seen with our recent projects, Netflix is the perfect partner to bring our stories to fans around the world.”

“With The Umbrella Academy and Polar, Netflix has pushed our content out into the world and allowed it to spread in a way that we’ve never experienced before, and we couldn’t be more excited to bring a whole new slate of movies and shows to their world-wide audience,” Keith Goldberg, Dark Horse Entertainment’s Senior Vice President, added.

“Following the success of The Umbrella Academy, we’re excited to extend our relationship with Dark Horse Comics,” Cindy Holland, Vice President, Original Content for Netflix, concluded. “The Netflix teams are already working in deep collaboration with Dark Horse to identify projects beyond the world of traditional superheroes — branching into horror, fantasy and family entertainment — that we think our members will love.”

Founded by Mike Richardson, Dark Horse Entertainment was spun off from Dark Horse Comics in 1992. The company’s first hits – The Mask and Timecop – were based on creations by Richardson himself, and the production house has since produced more than thirty films and series over the last few decades, including the Dark Matter series for the SyFy network and Resident Alien, another SyFy series starring Alan Tudyk of Firefly fame and based on the comic series by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse.

OnePlus partnership

On the following day, Netflix further announced that it had partnered with Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus to “deliver an incredible Netflix viewing experience on the much awaited OnePlus 7 Pro”, leveraging a “common philosophy of a community and member-first approach”.

Netflix released two new posters for their much-anticipated original series Sacred Games Season 2 to celebrate the partnership, noting that the imagery for the artwork was shot on OnePlus 7 Pro.

The posters capture two Sacred Games characters – Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan) and Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). The streaming service also gave fans a sneak peek into the series by releasing a behind-the-scenes video, also shot on the OnePlus 7 Pro.

The OnePlus 7 Pro will feature a three camera set-up and launches on 14 May at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre.

“Through . . . devices like the OnePlus 7 Pro, consumers increasingly are able to enjoy an amazing viewing experience on Netflix,” Jerome Bigio, Director-Partner Marketing, APAC, Netflix, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to celebrate the epic fandom of Sacred Games with posters and a behind-the-scenes video shot on the OnePlus 7 Pro.”

“OnePlus continues to look for innovative ways to engage and bring unique experiences to our community,” added Vikas Agarwal, General Manager, OnePlus India. “We are excited to partner with Netflix and Sacred Games Season 2 to creatively showcase the . . . capabilities of OnePlus 7 Pro. We can’t wait to unveil more about the product and the partnership at the launch event.”

Tech

Netflix management eyes mobile growth

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In online streaming giant Netflix’s Q1 earnings call, Chief Product Officer Greg Peters reportedly told investors and journalists that while the company dominates in the streaming services market, it isn’t the leading choice for entertainment when it comes to people using their phones.

“I think the most important headline message [is] how much time we don’t win on the mobile experience,” he said. About 97.5 percent of the time “around the world, people are using other different entertainment services, other ways to enjoy their time on their mobile phone.”

Peters believes that mobile can be a way for the company to add subscribers and said he wants the company to leverage its existing relationships to make that happen.

“It’s a great place for folks to find out about Netflix, to sign up for the service, even if they’re signing up for the service on mobile and then they’re watching on other devices like the TV, which we see as a common paradigm,” he added.

“It works really well with our partners, because whether it’s handset partners, which we can work to sort of preload our application on, or actually the mobile operators, which we can work on increasingly doing things like bundling Netflix as part of their standard offering, which you see us doing more and more around the world.”

Netflix expects growth in its home market – the United States – to slow; after adding around 1.75 million subscribers in the US in Q1, it forecasted closing Q2 only have added 300,000 more, due to increased churn after its recent hike in prices.

While the eventual launch of 5G mobile internet in the US – and other parts of the world – should herald an increase in subscribers for the company as it will facilitate faster and more reliable streaming for millions of customers.

There’s nothing more irritating that paying for a stream and then waiting hours for it to buffer or being forced to watch in standard definition because your bandwidth just isn’t big enough. Watching streaming video on a smartphone without Wi-Fi can be very frustrating at the moment.

In the meantime, there are other avenues that Netflix can pursue in its attempt to break into the mobile market. For example, it could make more deals like its current partnership with T-Mobile, where the wireless carrier actually pays for its customers to get the streaming service.

It seems very likely that other carriers around the world might be interested in bundling the streaming service with their mobile plans and/or using it as a carrot to dangle when trying to encourage customers to sign up to their services.

Netflix has also recently been testing a new US$3.63 mobile-only subscription plan in select countries. In India, the only test country that the notoriously private company was willing to divulge to the press, that’s half the cost of Netflix’s basic streaming plan, which covers all devices.