Remember when Netflix was seen as a sinking ship? Not anymore. The Internet streaming movie and TV service stated today that it added 2.03 million new U.S. subscribers for the first quarter of 2013, compared to 1.74 million new subscribers for the same period a year ago.
Netflix's investor letter stated that overall, it now has 34 million paid subscribers worldwide (that number does not count free trial members). Revenues for the quarter came in at $1.02 billion, versus $870 million for the same period a year ago. The company recorded a profit of $3 million for the quarter, compared to a loss of $5 million for the same period a year ago.
Netflix launched its first original series, House of Cards, in February. While Netflix didn't give any specific viewing numbers for the 13 episode political drama it did say that less than 8,000 people who used Netflix's free trial cancelled after watching the show. The company's second original series, the horror drama Hemlock Grove, debuted last Friday and Netflix, again without giving specifics, says it was viewed by more subscribers globally in its first weekend than House of Cards.
Netflix also announced it will now have a new $11.99 a month plan that will approve four video streams from one account at the same time. At the moment, the current limit for the regular $7.99 account is for two streams at a time. Netflix expects less than one percent of its subscriber base to switch to the new plan. The company recently announced it was going to transition from using Microsoft's Silverlight API to an HTML5 solution for streaming video via PC web browsers.
Source: Netflix | Image via Netflix
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