The curtain falls on the once emblematic service of Netflix DVD shipping by maila quarter of a century after two entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley They debuted with a concept that eventually spelled the death of the video store and a springboard to the streaming that has transformed the world of entertainment.
The DVD service, which has been displaced by streaming, will come to an end after Friday shipments from Netflix’s last five distribution centers in California, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey.
The less than 1 million recipients who still subscribe to the service will be able to keep the latest DVDs that arrive in their mailboxes.
Some of these die-hard subscribers will receive up to 10 DVDs as a parting gift from a service that once had 16 million subscribers. But in 2011 Netflix made the critical decision to separate the DVD business from a streaming service that now has 238 million subscribers worldwide — 42.5 million in Latin America — and had revenues of $31.5 billion in one year. .
By contrast, the DVD service grossed just $146 million last year. Its closure was inevitable in a context of growing competition in the streaming sector that forces Netflix to reduce costs to increase its profits.
“It’s very bittersweet.”said Marc Randolph, the CEO of Netflix when the company shipped its first DVD, “Beetlejuice”, in April 1998. “We knew this day would come, but the miracle is that it didn’t come 15 years ago”.
Randolph, who has not been involved in Netflix’s day-to-day operations for 20 years, came up with the idea for the DVD-by-mail service in 1997 with his friend and colleague Reed Hastings. He succeeded him as CEO and remained in the position until his resignation a few months ago.
Source: Gestion
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