Netflix is considering a movie subscription plan that entails only Internet streaming, without the mail order DVD service that made it famous, CEO Reed Hastings said.
Hastings told Bloomberg that a stream-only plan could come later this year or some time in 2010.
“We’ve got one singular objective, which is ‘Be successful in streaming,’” he said. “If we do that, that’s a homerun.”
Roughly 12,000 videos are currently available through Netflix's "Instant Watch" feature, which streams to a computer or compatible devices like the Roku box, TiVo or the Xbox 360. The by-mail service includes 100,000 choices. Earlier this year, Hastings said the company will invest heavily in expanding the Instant Watch library this year.
For now, Netflix will stick with a "best of both" strategy, but speaking to Bloomberg, Hastings said Netflix will have to shift towards online services to survive. In the long term, he said, an "appreciable number" of people will find that streaming is all they need. When that happens, the company wants to be ready with a plan for those customers.
It'll be interesting to see how Netflix sets the price for such a plan (Hastings won't tell at the moment). Even if, as Hastings says, "millions" of the company's 10 million subscribers use the Instant Watch feature, it'll have to be cheap enough to lure people who aren't interested in mail-order DVDs, but not so cheap as to convince existing customers to drop their DVD plans entirely.
What do you think is a fair price for stream-only Netflix?
