Media & Entertainment

Netflix loses 970,000 subscribers, its largest quarterly loss ever

Comment

Neon Netflix sign in window
Image Credits: Netflix

During the three-month period ending June 30, Netflix reported a loss of only 970,000 subscribers. Last quarter, the company had a weak outlook for the second quarter and predicted a net loss of two million subscribers. While today’s results beat the projection, it is still the largest quarterly loss in the company’s history.

The company reported a total of 220.67 million subscribers and said it expects to add one million in the third quarter.

Netflix has spent a couple of months adjusting its business strategy to prepare for the challenges it expects to face. The company laid off around 450 employees, announced a cheaper ad-supported subscription plan with a new partnership with Microsoft and put its foot down on password sharing.

Today, Netflix announced in its letter to shareholders that it will launch the ad-supported tier in the early part of 2023. Also, next year will see the official rollout of the paid sharing offering.

Netflix announced yesterday it is testing an “add a home” feature that will charge an extra $3 to share accounts with other households.

Netflix partners with Microsoft for its ad-supported plan

Netflix to test a new ‘add a home’ option to charge for password sharing

If you’ve been following our streaming coverage, then you know that Netflix is having a horrible year. In April, the company reported that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 — the first big loss in over a decade.

This year, Netflix’s stock was on a decline of approximately 70%. The market valuation has decreased from $300 billion to under $90 billion in less than a year. After the company reported it lost fewer subscribers than anticipated, Netflix shares increased 8%.

In addition to its shortcomings, the streamer received fewer Emmy nominations this month than HBO and HBO Max, even though it featured more programming. HBO picked up 140 nominations to Netflix’s 105, a number that emphasizes the downfall in quality entertainment for the streaming giant.

Season four of Stranger Things was a big hit amongst subscribers as the company touted it was the most streamed English-language show in its history with 1.3 billion hours viewed.

Netflix is betting on a more robust slate of content to accelerate growth. The new season of The Crown and the whopping $200 million budgeted action movie The Gray Man, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, will appear on the platform soon. The company also revealed a new Squid Game reality game show that will feature the biggest cash prize and largest cast in reality TV history.

On the gaming front, Netflix released the mobile game Into the Breach today. The new title is great for pocket gamers that enjoy strategy games with enemies, battles, and more.

The streaming service currently has more than 22 games available and plans to have 50 titles by the end of 2022, including ones tied to Netflix’s popular TV shows The Queen’s Gambit, Shadow and Bone and Too Hot to Handle.

More TechCrunch

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews focused on remarkable women who’ve contributed to…

Women in AI: Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick wants to pass more AI legislation

We took the pulse of emerging fund managers about what it’s been like for them during these post-ZERP, venture-capital-winter years.

A reckoning is coming for emerging venture funds, and that, VCs say, is a good thing

It’s been a busy weekend for union organizing efforts at U.S. Apple stores, with the union at one store voting to authorize a strike, while workers at another store voted…

Workers at a Maryland Apple store authorize strike

Alora Baby is not just aiming to manufacture baby cribs in an environmentally friendly way but is attempting to overhaul the whole lifecycle of a product

Alora Baby aims to push baby gear away from the ‘landfill economy’

Bumble founder and executive chair Whitney Wolfe Herd raised eyebrows this week with her comments about how AI might change the dating experience. During an onstage interview, Bloomberg’s Emily Chang…

Go on, let bots date other bots

Welcome to Week in Review: TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. This week Apple unveiled new iPad models at its Let Loose event, including a new 13-inch display for…

Why Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is so misguided

The U.K. Safety Institute, the U.K.’s recently established AI safety body, has released a toolset designed to “strengthen AI safety” by making it easier for industry, research organizations and academia…

U.K. agency releases tools to test AI model safety

AI startup Runway’s second annual AI Film Festival showcased movies that incorporated AI tech in some fashion, from backgrounds to animations.

At the AI Film Festival, humanity triumphed over tech

Rachel Coldicutt is the founder of Careful Industries, which researches the social impact technology has on society.

Women in AI: Rachel Coldicutt researches how technology impacts society

SAP Chief Sustainability Officer Sophia Mendelsohn wants to incentivize companies to be green because it’s profitable, not just because it’s right.

SAP’s chief sustainability officer isn’t interested in getting your company to do the right thing

Here’s what one insider said happened in the days leading up to the layoffs.

Tesla’s profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk axed the entire team

StrictlyVC events deliver exclusive insider content from the Silicon Valley & Global VC scene while creating meaningful connections over cocktails and canapés with leading investors, entrepreneurs and executives. And TechCrunch…

Meesho, a leading e-commerce startup in India, has secured $275 million in a new funding round.

Meesho, an Indian social commerce platform with 150M transacting users, raises $275M

Some Indian government websites have allowed scammers to plant advertisements capable of redirecting visitors to online betting platforms. TechCrunch discovered around four dozen “gov.in” website links associated with Indian states,…

Scammers found planting online betting ads on Indian government websites

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT announcement: What we know so far

The deck included some redacted numbers, but there was still enough data to get a good picture.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Cloudsmith’s $15M Series A deck

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude did not become a new App Store hit.

Anthropic’s Claude sees tepid reception on iOS compared with ChatGPT’s debut

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Look,…

Startups Weekly: Trouble in EV land and Peloton is circling the drain

Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack…

Founders Fund leads financing of composites startup Layup Parts

AI startup Anthropic is changing its policies to allow minors to use its generative AI systems — in certain circumstances, at least.  Announced in a post on the company’s official…

Anthropic now lets kids use its AI tech — within limits

Zeekr’s market hype is noteworthy and may indicate that investors see value in the high-quality, low-price offerings of Chinese automakers.

The buzziest EV IPO of the year is a Chinese automaker

Venture capital has been hit hard by souring macroeconomic conditions over the past few years and it’s not yet clear how the market downturn affected VC fund performance. But recent…

VC fund performance is down sharply — but it may have already hit its lowest point

The person who claims to have 49 million Dell customer records told TechCrunch that he brute-forced an online company portal and scraped customer data, including physical addresses, directly from Dell’s…

Threat actor says he scraped 49M Dell customer addresses before the company found out

The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it.

Bluesky now lets you personalize main Discover feed using new controls

Microsoft will launch its own mobile game store in July, the company announced at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Xbox president Sarah Bond shared that the company plans to…

Microsoft is launching its mobile game store in July

Smart ring maker Oura is launching two new features focused on heart health, the company announced on Friday. The first claims to help users get an idea of their cardiovascular…

Oura launches two new heart health features

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: OpenAI considers allowing AI porn

Garena is quietly developing new India-themed games even though Free Fire, its biggest title, has still not made a comeback to the country.

Garena is quietly making India-themed games even as Free Fire’s relaunch remains doubtful

The U.S.’ NHTSA has opened a fourth investigation into the Fisker Ocean SUV, spurred by multiple claims of “inadvertent Automatic Emergency Braking.”

Fisker Ocean faces fourth federal safety probe