Netflix Tops 50M Subscribers
Netflix's second-quarter earnings more than doubled and the Internet video service surpassed 50 million worldwide subscribers for the first time. "Consumers are enjoying more than ever being in control of their own schedules, able to click and watch whenever they want," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said .
Hastings said "Orange Is The New Black" became Netflix's most-watched series during the first month after the June 6 release of the second season.
Netflix Inc. ended June with 36.2 million subscribers in the U.S. and another 13.8 million customers in roughly 40 other countries. The company picked up 1.1 million subscribers outside the U.S. in the second quarter.
The company said it expects to add another 3.7 million subscribers worldwide in the current quarter ending in September, including 1.3 million U.S. customers. It also plans to start selling its Internet video service in six more European countries in September, including Germany and France.
As Netflix's video-streaming service steadily grows, the DVD-by-mail rental business that once was the company's foundation is slowly crumbling. The DVD rental service shed another 391,000 subscribers in the second quarter to end June with fewer than 6.3 million customers. That's a decline of 55 percent in less than three years.