Could Netflix have made a business out of being a software provider?
I am admittedly ignorant to both the market potential as well as the tech/eng limitations, but I always wonder if Netflix could have focused their strategy on infrastructure-as-a-service for steaming content companies instead of becoming a content developer. Anyone at/from Netflix know if this was 1) ever discussed or 2) considered but infeasible in business reality? #netflix #IaaS
Streaming is easy enough to implement as you see how fast media companies came up with their versions. It may not be as good as Netflix, but as long as customers are paying it doesn’t have to be the best.
It is not easy at all at scale. Netflix and paved the way for it. Even Disney and HBO took years to get there. HBO apps were horrible and unusable when they launched. (I love their content though). Luckily they have improved them a bit.
Doesn't netflix have one of the best algorithms for streaming high quality video efficiently over a network. I remember watching a side by side comparison of the relative mbps download needed for it and it beat all the competitors. This was a couple years back so not sure if that's still the case. Seemed like a crucial part of the livestreaming problem is exactly that, bandwidth consumption on major networks. If netix has the technology to deliver that solution still, it certainly is worthy of growth.
They should. They desperately need more revenue paths.
I agree, I feel like revenue permanence is too tied to content. But I think the potential to deliver IaaS has been eroded, whereas if they got ahead of it and tried to partner with the other media companies prior to their own rollouts, it could have paid off. I’m no expert though on whether or not the demand or pricing control was really there.
Lots of folks do this already. See Akamai: https://www.akamai.com/solutions/content-delivery-network
There are lots of other players in the market I think Netflix has an edge when it comes to video streaming but who knows. They do already have their own nodes deployed around the world so it would be trivial for them to “collocate” other users content on them.
Or they can just sell movies like all the other competitors
Hollywood, music and movies have been around forever and seem pretty profitable. Imagine if Netflix didn’t produce woke garbage and instead went the route of making the highest quality content with zero ideology. Seems the industry at large is doing well while Netflix thought they could cater to 1% of the population indefinitely.
Enterprise services usually have market cap around 10b. We have the competency but it's not worth doing.
Iaas seems pretty low roi
Everyone’s monday morning quarterback. That’s okay.
Uber probably needs it more than Netflix, we are atleast a real business making a profit and not a money burning shitco.
All they need to do is focus on their content. With the recent comments from their CEO addressing the wokeness, I think they are moving in the right direction. They ofcourse have superior tech, once people get hooked in with the right kind of content they should be back on track.
Easier said than done. It’s in their DNA to make crappy content and that won’t change just because the CEO isn’t “woke”