Forget Hulu and Amazon: What Netflix is worried about is TV Everywhere | THE NEXT WEB

By ANNA HEIM

Do you think Netflix is worried about the fact that Hulu Plus now has over 1.5 million subscribers? Well, think again.

According to the letter its managers wrote to its shareholders today following the release of its its Q4 earnings, the film & TV streaming and DVD rental service is much more concerned about TV Everywhere and similar services than about over-the-top (OTT) pure players such as Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.

Even its conviction that Amazon will “brand their video subscription offering as a standalone service at a price less than [Netflix's]“, echoing earlier reports, doesn’t seem a major source of concern for the company. Call it bravado if you want, but Netflix boasts a much larger catalogue than Amazon and Hulu Plus.

This also reflects on viewing times: while Netflix’s subscribers streamed 2 billion hours of content in the last quarter, the company believes that Amazon and Hulu Plus’s ”respective total viewing hours are each less than 10% of [Netflix's].” What it doesn’t say, of course, is that Hulu’s free, ad-supported streaming service also attracts millions of eyeballs.

Still, it may be fair to compare oranges with oranges, and Hulu Plus’s offer is indeed closer to Netflix’s. As a matter of fact, its CEO Reed Hastings once declared that “Hulu Plus could become a competitor over time.” Yet, Netflix is quick in pointing differences to its advantage:

“In the case of Hulu Plus, subscribers have to pay for the service ($7.99) and still watch commercials (unlike commercial-free Netflix). Even if Hulu could afford our level of content spend, at the same price consumers would prefer commercial-free Netflix over commercial-interrupted Hulu Plus.”

While Netflix doesn’t reveal how much it spends on acquisitions, its budget reportedly amounts to $2b, compared to Hulu’s $500m content licensing envelope for 2012.

Read the full article at The Next Web.