Netflix loses 200K subscribers in less than 100 days

Netflix suffered its first subscriber loss in more than a decade, causing its shares to plunge 25 per cent in extended trading amid concerns that the pioneering streaming service may have already seen its best days.

The company's customer base fell by 200,000 subscribers during the January-March period, according to its quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday. It is the first time that Netflix's subscribers have fallen since the streaming service became available throughout most of the world.

The drop this year stemmed in part from Netflix's decision to withdraw from Russia to protest the war against Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 700,000 subscribers.

Netflix believes that factors hampering its growth include the time it is taking for homes to get access to affordable broadband internet service and smart televisions, along with subscribers sharing their accounts with people not living in their homes.

The streaming giant estimated that while it has nearly 222 million households paying for its service, accounts are shared with more than 100 million other households not paying the television streaming service.

Netflix last year began testing ways to make money from people sharing accounts, such as by adding a feature that lets subscribers pay slightly more to add other households.

Another factor for Netflix is intense competition from titans such as Apple and Disney.