Netflix is a global provider of streaming movies and TV series, and now has over 75 million subscribers. Netflix started as an American DVD-by-mail service in 1998, and began streaming in 2007. Netflix expanded with streaming to Canada in 2010 and now serves over 190 countries with streaming. Netflix’s first big original series was House of Cards, which debuted in 2013, and Netflix now produces hundreds of hours of original programming around the world. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California.
After having entered a few European markets in 2015, Netflix made a surprise announcement saying that the streaming service is now available in 130 additional countries. Looking at the map below illustrates that Netflix is now available almost everywhere in the world. Netflix is not available for now in China, Syria and Crimea.
Netflix had first expanded outside the United States in 2010, when its streaming offering became available in Canada. In the past few years, the company’s international push had picked up pace but no one really predicted the service to reach almost universal coverage so soon. Discussing the omission of China, CEO Reed Hastings stated that his company is still working on bringing its services to the largest market in the world but warned that it could take some time to gain approval by the Chinese government.
As of September 2015, Netflix had 43 million domestic and 26 million international streaming subscribers. Given the announcement, it’ll be interesting to observe how quickly the latter number will increase.
(Source: Statista).