Buoyed by expansion in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, Netflix’s global subscriber base is expected to grow by 44% to 128 million from the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2022, according to new data published by Digital TV Research.
Not surprisingly, growth in North America for the No. 1 SVOD company will slow relative to other regions. The company’s North American customer base is expected to grow from 53.6 million at the end of 2016 to 63.3 million by 2022. In Western Europe, Netflix is expected to expand from 18.6 million users to 29 million over the same time frame.
At the end of 2016, 81% of Netflix customers came from either of the two regions. But by 2022, Digital TV Research predicts that the North American and Western European share will fall to 72%.
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Expansion, the research company said, will come in Asia, where the SVOD operator’s base is expected to triple from 3.6 million users to nearly 10.2 million. In Latin America, the numbers are expected to rise from 10.9 million to 16.3 million.
Netflix users are expected to increase from 1.1 million to 3.5 million in Eastern Europe over a five-year span. And in Africa, the company is predicted to go from just 172,000 users to 1.4 million.
“This impressive growth comes despite Netflix not having direct access to subscribers in the world’s largest (populous) country: China,” said Digital TV Research principal analyst, Simon Murray, in a statement.
“Furthermore, Digital TV Research believes that Netflix will fall foul of Russian legislation,” he added. “Due to be introduced in July 2017 this restricts foreign companies to only 20% of digital platforms’ equity.”
