Netflix flipped the switch today and is now operating in India and more than 130 other new countries, including Russia and South Korea.
Netflix Expands Into India, but Not China
Now streaming in more than 130 new countries.
Asa Mathat
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
The announcement made by CEO Reed Hastings at CES means that the streaming service is operating in almost every part of the world except for China. Industry executives had expected the India announcement to come today but didn’t know when the service would go live. In his announcement, Hastings reiterated Netflix’s desire to go to China, “where we hope to also be in the future.”
International expansion has been a focus at Netflix for the last couple of years. It’s key to supporting the company’s growth story as well as its lofty stock price.
Hastings’s address at CES didn’t include much other news. Instead, he used his speech to reemphasize Netflix’s strategy of creating an on-demand, worldwide TV network.
Hastings did say that in Q4 of last year, Netflix viewers watched 12 billion hours on the service, up from eight billion in the same quarter of the previous year.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
