Netflix Takes The Lead Over HBO

Netflix posted their third quarter earnings today and blew projections out of the water with an increase of 1.3 million subscribers. Netflix now has more than forty million subscribers and has overtaken HBO in paid subscribers.

According to a letter from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells, Netflix has jumped from less than 30 million to 40 million subscribers  in the past year. That’s not all though, Netflix has now officially served more than 5 billion hours of streaming video content in the last three months. According to the last set of numbers released in April, Netflix had streamed four billion hours of content during their first quarter. That’s an incredible increase of 1 billion hours of streaming content over the last six months.

Why such an increase in Netflix subscribers? Some believe it’s in part because of the Netflix original series being streamed through the service but there is also the availability of varied premium content for low cost streaming.

Is Netflix looking to compete with HBO? Whether they want to or not the two have been pitted against each other but the struggle for Netflix is going to be hard fought. HBO has already taken home 27 Emmy Awards where Netflix has just three. But how close is the competition in terms of subscribers? Netflix sits at 29.9 million paying members versus HBO’s 28.7 million US customers.