Netflix has released their quarterly earnings report and, in the accompanying letter to shareholders, are surprisingly forthright with their strategies and struggles.
As for the struggles, surprisingly but also not-so-surprisingly, Netflix says they "compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO." Keeping up with all the different new offerings of TV, games or whatever else is generally very hard, they say in businessese: “there are thousands of competitors in this highly fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those great experiences.”
Although this might sound serious, Netflix is doing just fine. Even though they didn't meet their expectations for earnings this quarter (no doubt because they raise their prices again!), they note that they "grew annual revenue 35% to $16 billion in 2018, and nearly doubled operating profits to $1.6 billion." Not to mention the fact that they've left almost all competitors in the dust with a total 139 million subscribers worldwide. As for concerns about the effects of Disney entering the streaming world this year: "our focus is not on Disney+, Amazon or others, but on how we can improve our experience for our members.” Netflix is so confident that they're miles ahead of the rest of their competitors that the company's CEO said in 2017 that “we’re competing with sleep on the margin," that "when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night.” He's not wrong.
