Netflix’s 20 Million Members Stream About 8 Billion Hours Of Content Per Year

Sites include Netflix.com . Published on January 10th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

It looks like despite the early sputters, Netflix has finally got the engine up and running with a potential blinding finish to 2011. Where Netflix fell done with some of its subscription services it apparently made up ground with its streaming business.

Based on a recent report released by the company, the last quarter of 2011, saw its 20 million streaming customers instantly watch around 2 billion hours of content. Keeping in mind that Netflix has streaming customers in around 45 countries, that activity equates to around 8 billion hours of content each year.

But some critics aren’t buying the Q4 performance and many are saying Netflix shouldn’t have a dance until its final earnings figures are compiled. On the one hand they do have a point since the nearly 1 million subscribers that jumped ship in September are sure to affect the bottom line. On the other hand though, Netflix did project good numbers at the same time it announced that those customers had planned to cancel their subscriptions. The company had also posted strong numbers for the early quarters of 2011, so overall; it might not have done so badly for 2011 proper.

We’ll just have to wait for the financial reports.