Netflix has collapsed in one of its highest priority territories globally, which adds another complication to the dense terrain through which they walk in this fight to dominate the streaming platform market.
Decades ago, this site was the absolute master of this segment and for many years it positioned itself as the leader of its class with a wide catalog of productions of all kinds, added to some original series and movies that initially had relatively high quality standards.
Incidentally, there’s an admirable algorithm that is usually (unless you need to recalibrate it) pretty spot on with its recommendations, when there’s a wide range of options on the site.
But things have radically changed since those days. Other competitors took their star productions from there and created their own services where they placed them as exclusive content. What reconfigured the terrain with the integration of sites such as Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video and more.
The transition was slow at first, but by now we have reached a tangled point, where everything has become so fragmented that some users have adopted the dynamic of abandoning some subscriptions for a certain number of months to temporarily move to another site.
Such a flow of churn constantly alters market share shares across platforms, but Netflix has always held the highest share of subscribers. Until now.
Netflix ceases to be the leader of streaming platforms in the United States
JustWatch is quite an interesting site that was born from this fragmentation of platforms that we describe. Where it is enough to put the title of a series or movie to find out exactly on which streaming service it is currently available.
And it turns out that this site just published a statistical analysis (via GizChina) where it quantifies the percentage distribution of the market that streaming platforms have in the United States today. Finding to the surprise of many that Netflix is no longer in the first place:
During the first quarter of 2023 this sudden turn would have taken place where Netflix now occupies 20% of the market. A figure that is considerable but has still sent it to second place on the list, thus leaving the ranking:
- Amazon Prime Video: 21%
- netflix: 20%
- DisneyPlus: 15%
- HBO Max: 14%
- Hulu: 11%
- Paramount Plus: 7%
- AppleTV+: 6%
- Others: 6%
As we see, Amazon Prime Video is now the master of the United States, while HBO Max battles alongside Hulu and Disney Plus with this rotation dynamic described.