Netflix attracted 10 million new subscribers in Q2 2020. But what’s next?
It should come as no surprise to anyone that Netflix is doing great during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite economic recovery around the world, many people still work from home, giving them much more free time to watch content on digital video platforms.
In the first quarter of 2020 alone, Netflix managed to attract an astounding 15.8 million new subscribers, and now that the second quarter has ended, this number has increased to 26 million new paid subscription users. For reference: in 2019, it took Netflix an entire year to reach the same numbers.
It’s hard to predict whether Netflix can continue to grow that fast for the remainder of 2020. As more people return to work and their free time shrinks, Netflix may experience some churn in its user base. The company’s management really gives very modest forecasts for the third quarter of 2020.
Netflix plans to grow its subscriber base by only 2.5 million over the next three months. The platform believes that strong results for the first and second quarter will reduce demand in the second half of 2020. In other words, almost everyone who might have subscribed to the service as a direct result of COVID-19 quarantine measures has probably already done so.
But speaking of the impressive numbers of Netflix subscribers, it’s also worth noting that not everything was good for the company in the last quarter. Revenues for this period fell short of expectations (despite the overall growth compared to the same period last year), and the impact of COVID-19 on the production schedule for new TV series and films should not be discounted either. The virus has proven so devastating in this regard that Netflix has postponed many of its shows until late 2021.
