Just like the stealthy tornado, which lies in wait to ensnare oblivious victims, Netflix has been relatively silent about its plans to stop users from sharing their passwords. Make no mistake, following its rollout to several markets, it’s still on track to turn up this year. But it’ll take a little longer than originally expected.
The company said, while reporting its most recent set of financial results, that the plan to limit password sharing on the service more aggressively has been pushed back toward the middle of 2023.
Netflix in the USA
These plans apply to the company’s largest market — that is, the United States. Other, smaller territories might still get whacked with the ‘no sharing!’ stick in the coming months. But, according to the company’s report, password sharing is on hold until some time in the second quarter of 2023. The reason? Netflix reckons that it can make the ‘feature’ better.
What that actually entails remains to be seen but it is expected that the company’s financial results will see an upswing in the second half of the year as a result. An estimated 100 million users (those are the company’s numbers) use an account they don’t actually pay for. Converting even a percentage of those into fully-paid subscribers will massively impact the streaming giant’s bottom line.
Subscriber growth on the platform has been slowing for some time, a natural consequence over time and as competitor services have popped up. It’s looking for ways to shore up that hosepipe of revenue. In the meantime, it’s also shutting down its original service — Netflix, once upon a time, used to mail DVDs to users. That legacy business will come to an end on 29 September this year.
Source: Reuters