Netflix, Inc. Makes A Surprise Entry In Various Asian Market

Netflix, Inc. shocked the world with its latest release – unless you are sitting in China, Syria, North Korea or the Crimea, you are blessed enough to access the video streaming media service. There was an unprecedented global expansion into 130 countries on January 6, 2015. The original content by the media giant had made its services available in all over the world however the categories might vary from country to country.

Earlier on Wednesday, the video streaming service was launched in India and Russia but not China, catering to over 70 million potential customers in those regions. So the total countries that the service is now available in is 190; now it just need to be in 20 more countries by the end of 2016. This news was revealed at the CES 2016 conference held in Las Vegas, where the media giant had planned to announce the entry into the Indian market.

Along with making the expected announced, it added to it the launch in Russia as well as Indonesia. It is safe to say that the on demand video subscription service is now available in some of the largest countries of the world. Initially in 2015, the company was in talks with Alibaba Group Holding regarding a potential partnership but soon after the Chinese e-commerce giant launched its on video streaming service in the country.

The chief executive officer of one of America’s largest media companies, Reed Hastings stated that it hopes to enter the Chinese market in the near future, as per a blog post by Variety’s Live Blog. Another official announcement was made by the company suggesting that the service will most likely not be available in North Korea, Crimea as well as Syria due to restrictions by the U.S. government.

In the new market, Netflix, Inc. has planned to keep its same pricing strategy. In India, the pricing starts with 500 Indian Rupees which is $7.49 per month for the basic, single user, non-HD package. The standard and premium packages come in about 650 Indian Rupees ($9.75 per month) and 800 Indian Rupees ($11.99). At this point, the customers of the new market are only able to make payments via credit and debit cards. It is highly expected that it might get into partnership with various mobile carriers so that the millions of users who do not own a credit or a debit card are able to make payments easily.