Netflix would record half a million subscribers in Latam

In its 4Q 2011 results, Netflix released that “in Latin America, we ended the year with about the same number of members as we had in Canada at the same time post-launch in 2010″. At that time, Netflix had recorded 176,000 free subscribers and 333,000 paid subscribers. According to Netflix’ CEO, Reed Hastings, “it will take us longer than two years” to reach profitability in Latin America

The OTT stated that “Latin America presents unique challenges relative to our other markets; namely, low device penetration, high piracy, varying preferences for subtitles, and relatively low credit card usage for ecommerce. We are quickly learning what content works best in the region, and are adjusting our content library accordingly. We have already nearly doubled our content library since launch, adding considerably more US and local movies and TV. We are rapidly increasing the accessibility of our service by adding more subtitles in both Spanish and Portuguese, in addition to dubs, as well as expanding the range of Netflix enabled devices in the region”.

Netflix has found problems in 2011 with credit card payments.”Processing ecommerce consumer payments is quite challenging as compared with North America and Europe. To overcome this challenge, we are working with our local payment partners to optimize our systems,exploring adding new payment methods and testing various trial campaigns to improve conversion”.

During a meeting with analysts, Hastings explained: “we’re working hard on all of our payment issues and subtitling issues, rapidly improving them, and then we’ll be able to see what’s the underlying growth trajectory. So it’s not out of the question, but I would say the odds are it will take longer than two years to reach profitability. And I’ll point out that the two years is a bit of a aspirational arbitrary benchmark”.