As a part of the earnings conference call for the fourth quarter of 2009, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced: "Now over 10% of our subscribers are Blu-ray enabled." In other words, over 1.2 million Netflix subscribers now pay the $1-$9 Blu-ray access charge over their monthly subscription rate. This represents over 70% growth year-on-year, despite the 20% rate increase during 2009.
In December 2008, Netflix announced it had hit 500,000 Blu-ray subscribers (just over 5% of total subscribers at the time). By the end of that year, there were 700,000 Blu-ray subscribers. As of September 30, 2009, that figure had passed the one-million mark (see blu-ray.com,
October 23, 2009). During most of 2009, the percentage of users that were on Blu-ray subscription had "stayed pretty steady for us just under 10%."
"Blu-ray is expanding nicely for us," summed up Hastings yesterday.
Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy specifically mentioned "subscriber engagement with Blu-ray
content" as one of the reasons behind the very low churn (percentage of subscriptions cancelled) in the quarter.
Despite the increased use of video streaming, disc shipments are far from declining and are actually expected to "grow rapidly, at annual rates of approximately 20%," said McCarthy. Reed Hastings also said that the company is expected to spend about $600 million on postage this year.