Netflix UK launches in Britain and Ireland

The news of Netflix launching in Britain is no surprise. Rather, it was previously reported late last year amid rumors that the launch wasn’t going to push through as announced.

Netflix is a subscription-based digital distribution service that has been in operation since 1999. The company had around 24 million subscribers as of April last year, and the figure is continuing to rise. In October 2011, it was announced the service will be seeing its own much-awaited launch in the UK.

In the UK, the service will be up against BSkyB’s premium drama service and LoveFilm, which is owned by Amazon. Because of this recent expansion, Netflix predicts that it will be taking on a loss this year. But the results so far has been quite favorable for the firm.

Netflix saw its shares rise by 2.4 percent to $88.33, while the Nasdaq barely changed. However, Amazon’s shares fell slightly by 0.9 percent to $181.01.

Daniel Ernst, of Hudson Square Research, commented: “People are excited about the UK launch even though it had been in the works for some time.”

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings revealed that the company considered BSkyB’s services as its main competition, and not LoveFilm, stating: “Lovefilm is not the enemy. When you talk about big entertainment businesses, Sky Atlantic and Sky Movies are huge, and our advantage is we are much lower priced than the Sky packages, and it is all on demand — click and watch.”

When prompted about further expansions for the company, Hastings responded: “I am not sure about this year. For now we are focused on the UK and Ireland.”