Does Netflix Have a Future?

Yes, I think Netflix survives, and prospers, for a number of reasons;

A) not "every other entertainment company" is starting, or can sell, a streaming business.

At one end of the scale you have Disney, with a huge catalog of stuff you've already seen. At the other end you have Apple with a handful of shows that you can watch all of in a single month.

But there are lots and lots of long-tail entertainers who will ultimately sell their work to a provider. Which brings us to B)

B) content costs money. And Netflix is out-spending the others. Which they can afford to do because they have the larger income from this already.

Of course there will be multiple platforms going forward, but most people will consolidate to 2 or 3 services. And for most people it'll be Netflix plus 1 or 2 others.

Netflix will have to adjust their business model in order to stay competitive.

They sowed the seeds of that years ago when they started building their own content -- Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, and so forth.

They could license their technology to the other streaming services for IP revenue.

They could start advertising.

They could branch into AR/VR, music services, data cataloging, more interactive content, and so forth.

They can continue their international push.

They could sell their engineering services as a consultancy (Chaos Monkey!). They could build 5G-enabled multimedia content. So on and so forth.

In short, even though their primary market is now being sucessfully encroached, they have enough of the FAANGM knowledge capital to pivot profoundly. I look forward to seeing what Reed Hastings does next.

I think when the data tells them that their strategy isn't effective at decreasing churn they'll pivot to a different one, and they'll do it faster than pretty much any other company in the space is able to. And if the data tells them that strategy isn't great, they'll pivot again.

IMO people underestimate the power of being a tech company that spends on media versus a media company that spends on tech.

I also think they're better suited to international content development and distribution, which has always been tricky for Hollywood. Part of that is technology, part of it is organizational.

Remarkably few companies die of innovation. People have subscribed to Netflix. It solves the problem of having something to do when lazy. People won't really switch to watch Game of Thrones or Simpsons if they can still marathon Friends for years. I've been marathoning Adventure Time with my kids since last year, and even though it's the only thing I watch on Netflix, it's still a better deal than buying whole 10 seasons.

It'll probably be the WhatsApp effect - everyone knows it's inferior and play with changing but it's just too much effort to. Netflix has some lock in because people share their accounts with family members or even "family" they just met online, and people are hesitant to unsubscribe.

> I have personally found their original content to be 90% mediocre

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't think personal preference is really an indicator of the success of a company. Especially not one as influential or 'cultural' as Netflix.

It's like when people on Hackernews claim that Google is going downhill and will be 'dead' soon just because they don't like their search results.