Netflix to expand to Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg

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ComputerMKII

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Took them long enough

Netflix to expand to Germany, France and Switzerland

Netflix has announced plans to expand to a further six European countries before the end of the year.

The TV and movie streaming service intends to launch in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

The US-based firm has 48 million subscribers in over 40 countries.

One analyst said the success of the latest rollout might depend on how much content was dubbed into local languages.

"Germany potentially could be quite a difficult market as it has low pay-TV penetration and seemingly low willingness to pay," said Ian Maude from the media consultancy Enders Analysis.

"One thing I'm curious to see in Germany is whether or not it has dubbed a lot of the show for the market because - while French TV has a lot of subtitling - in Germany foreign language movies and TV shows are generally voiced over, and that can be quite an expensive process."

Germany's large number of broadband users - the fourth biggest such population in the world - makes it a potentially lucrative market.

However, Netflix will have to compete against video-on-demand incumbents including Sky Deutschland's Snap, Vivendi's Watchever, ProSiebenSat.1's MaxDome and Amazon Instant Video.

In France, it faces the prospect of competing against a rival that owns the rights to a series branded a "Netflix exclusive" in other territories: Vivendi's CanalPlay owns the domestic rights to the second season of the drama House of Cards in the country.

Netflix also must contend with the fact that French audiovisual laws require local broadcasters to invest significant sums in domestic content. However, Les Echos newspaper has suggested Netflix might get around this by basing the service in Luxembourg.

For now, the firm has only said it would provide "further details, including pricing, programming and supported devices at a later date".

California-based Netflix reported profits of $53m (£32m) in its most recent quarter.

Despite previous international launches - including the Netherlands last year and the UK in 2012 - the firm's revenue is mostly generated by US subscribers.

Netflix's most recent figures stated that it had 11.8 million members paying for streaming content outside the US at the end of March but about three times that figure within the country.

The firm has previously said that it became profitable in Canada within two years of launch, but has not released similar information about its other foreign ventures.

However, chief executive Reed Hastings recently said the company recognised that it must tailor the content it provided to each audience.

"We've seen tremendous success in the Netherlands, where we launched six months ago, and that, I think, encourages us about being able to figure out the right programming formula in each nation," he told bank analysts in April.

"We're going to learn as we go. If we're very fortunate, we'll have programmed it completely correctly from day one.

"More likely, we'll figure out some stuff's working, some stuff's not; we'll adjust the formula."
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http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27496055
 
Pure netflix would be bliss for me. Just the US service in germany. There is nothing more i would need. Dubbed versions are most of the times also inferior.
 
Hah, my first thought was about dubbing too. The translations they do here in Finland are done as cheaply as possible, AFAIK. Granted, the market is probably insignificant in comparison and they might not want to invest that much here.
 
at some point there were news that maybe they are coming also to Bulgaria .... guess NOT. well too much piracy here probably killed that idea.
 
Upcoming big budget netflix show Sense8 was funded because it would "play to a planetary audience".

The plot takes place (and is being shot) in US, Mexico City, London, Iceland, Berlin, Nairobi, Seoul and Mumbai.. so perhaps by 2015 Netflix plans to be available to most of those places.
 
Foshy said:
I thought Switzerland was never going to get Netflix. Pretty excited.
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Pretty much. It's a digital wasteland. I don't get why we're left out of stuff so often. We're a weahlty country and they charge us much more for consumer goods but the selection of everything is complete crap.
 
Uncle said:
Hah, my first thought was about dubbing too. The translations they do here in Finland are done as cheaply as possible, AFAIK. Granted, the market is probably insignificant in comparison and they might not want to invest that much here.
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Yeah, the Finnish subs are mostly serviceable enough but there's some really goofy translation errors every now and then.
 
Thank you netflix!
I was afraid that switzerland would be once again be to small a market to be interesting. The entertainment services available on PS or Xbox (360 as One is not yet available) is virtually nonexistent....
 
lexi said:
Got excited seeing 'Austria'. Trolled again!
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not sure I understand

Does this mean we DO get netflix but later on?

Also: Will we get an own version or just shared one with germany?
This is very important to me because I don't want to spend my €s on crippled(means: cut/censored) (horror)movies which apply to germany's rigorous laws.
as it is with pay TV "Sky" right now.
 
iamaustrian said:
not sure I understand

Does this mean we DO get netflix but later on?

Also: Will we get an own version or just shared one with germany?
This is very important to me because I don't want to spend my €s on crippled(means: cut/censored) (horror)movies which apply to germany's rigorous laws.
as it is with pay TV "Sky" right now.
Click to expand...

I am Australian.
 
Hammer24 said:
That's the deal breaker right there. No more shitty dubs, and I´m in!
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We don't dub pretty much anything here in Finland but for instance with some cartoons there's an option to switch between the dub and original audio track. I imagine it'd be the same with German Netflix.
 
Sky airing House of Cards should have ringed a bell. Italy is never going to get Netflix at this rate. :(
Anyway, do Germany, France, etc... Get all the content that's avaiable on US Netflix or its different?
 
They'd be pretty dumb not to offer the original versions, as the kind of people who already know what Netflix is and are the first to subscribe probably only watch the original, not dubbed versions. Otherwise they will have a rather difficult time here in Switzerland, as downloading or streaming media is legal.
 
TronLight said:
Sky airing House of Cards should have ringed a bell. Italy is never going to get Netflix at this rate. :(
Anyway, do Germany, France, etc... Get all the content that's avaiable on US Netflix or its different?
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different
netflix must adapt to the laws and the market of this countries

i really hope in france we'll see old shows like knight rider airwolf street hawk etc... all my youth !
 
Alpende said:
Pretty crazy to think huge countries such as Germany and France don't have Netflix yet while the Netherlands do.
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As the article states, people are just not willing to pay for TV in Germany - or, to be more specific, pay more than they already have to for cable service and the mandatory fee for public broadcasting and infrastructure. Our FTA channels offer everything most people would ever want and ads are heavily regulated so they're not nearly as annoying as they are in other countries.
 
Gambit said:
Great. I think I'd subscribe IF the German version lets me watch shows in the original language.
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One and done. The only reason why I'm subbed to Watchever (and Sky Go for HBO).
Amazon is shit, nearly nothing has its original language.

TronLight said:
Sky airing House of Cards should have ringed a bell. Italy is never going to get Netflix at this rate. :( [...]
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House of Cards in also on Sky in Germany.
 
Donny Hayabusa said:
Pure netflix would be bliss for me. Just the US service in germany. There is nothing more i would need. Dubbed versions are most of the times also inferior.
Click to expand...

Gambit said:
Great. I think I'd subscribe IF the German version lets me watch shows in the original language.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat. I just want to watch my TV shows in English without needing a proxy or American credit card. As of right now I'm buying all my episodes through Apple TV with an US account. A subscription model could save me so much money...
 
GCX said:
We don't dub pretty much anything here in Finland but for instance with some cartoons there's an option to switch between the dub and original audio track. I imagine it'd be the same with German Netflix.
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The original audio track is not available in all cartoons. The most annoying example is Quack Pack (Nokkapokka) because the cartoon is about Donald Duck and the Finnish voice actor for Donald overdoes the "duck voice" so hard it's difficult to interpret what he's actually saying.
 
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