James R | On 16, Jun 2015

Netflix is expected to grow its number of subscribers to almost 70 million people worldwide by the end of this year.

The VOD service has been expanding rapidly in recent years, with launches in Australia and New Zealand joining existing territories such as the UK, USA and France. The company is now planning to launch in Japan, Spain, Portugal and Italy this autumn – a move that a study by Digital TV Research predicts will boost its international (non-US) subscriber list to 26.36 million people. US subscribers, meanwhile, will reach 43.54 million by the end of 2015, taking the site’s global total to 69.9 million.

The report, titled “Global OTT TV and Video Forecast”, also highlights the growth for the overall industry, with revenue in the 64 countries monitored predicted to reach $51.1 billion in 2020, up from the $4.2 billion recorded in 2010 and the $26 billion expected this year.

The US will remain the dominant territory, with OTT TV and video revenues rising by $16.6 billion between 2010 and 2020 to $19.1 billion. China’s OTT TV and video revenues will rocket from $40 million in 2010 to $2,815 million in 2020, pushing China up to fourth place in the world rankings. Overall, OTT revenues will exceed $1 billion in 11 countries by 2020.

This is mainly due to the growth in the subscription VOD sector, thanks to Netflix’s booming progress and other services such as Amazon Prime. Indeed, SVOD is forecast to become the largest revenue source in 2020, overtaking OTT advertising. SVOD will add $14 billion between 2014 and 2020, with advertising on OTT sites up by nearly $12 billion.

The report forecasts 249 million SVOD homes by 2020, up from 20 million in 2010 and an expected 117 million by end-2015. The US will contribute 70 million SVOD homes to the 2020 total.

SVOD revenues will soar from $1.0 billion in 2010 to $7.6 billion in 2014 and onto $21.6 billion in 2020. The US generated SVOD revenues of $753 million in 2010. Its revenues will climb by 765 per cent to $6,516 million in 2020.

“SVOD has developed even faster than we expected in our last edition a year ago,” says Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research.

“Some of this growth was spurred by Netflix’s aim to establish operations in 200 countries by end-2016. Not only has the launch of Netflix boosted each market, but the anticipation of its launch has galvanized local players into action – creating a whirlwind of promotional activity.”

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