Not so long ago Netflix was still talking about a roll-out country by country with some targeted countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore targeted for early 2016.
In early January 2016 it announced deployment across all countries, with the exception of Syria and mainland China immediately.
This makes a lot of sense as the target market for Netflix middle class urban internet savvy consumers exists everywhere and uses the same tools everywhere.
The old country by country roll out is an anachronism.
Of course its direct marketing efforts will still be targeted to specific countries to ensure critical mass and the alignment of special language content with demand.
Netflix is positioning as the main provider of on-demand TV to hasten the speed of decline of linear TV and become one of the major players in the new media ecosystem.
If it can replicate the success it is having in the US it is very likely to be one of the major players.
In the US it currently generates revenues of $34 and profits of $11 per household. In time it is looking for a penetration of US Households of 50-75% and gross margins of 40% which would generate revenues, at current rates of $7.4bn and profits of $2.9bn in the US.
Replicating this across the 1.5 billion households is Netflix’s plan. This grows the global potential tenfold for Netflix up to a possible $70bn+ in Revenues and $25bn+ in Profits. A potential it might reach at current rates of growth by 2025, in about ten years time.
In 2016 however it plans to re-invest the whole of the contribution made by the US in supporting its global deployment and growth so that it can capture the ground before strong local players establish themselves and sue its scale to increase the barriers to entry.
In addition, the investment in proprietary series and the insistence, where possible, to have exclusive streaming rights on popular content will further handicap the growth of competitors.
Netflix has a global but highly focused strategy. It will only offer subscription based movies and TV series and will not divert, except for its legacy DVD business, away from it at least at the moment to ensure it can dominate this niche positioning.
It is great to see such a giant being so focused and determined in its objective and, so far, executing its strategy so successfully.
But again Netflix is not a new company. It started in 1997 and for ten years was battling it out without great success with Blockbuster.
It then discovered streaming only just ahead of the boost in Internet speeds and was able and had the foresight to invest rapidly into this area with a clear vision about the fundamental shift in consumer benefits and therefore the inescapable logic in the migration from linear to on demand TV.
It was not only right in its prediction, but more importantly its actions made the transition quicker and more dramatic.
The only area where it might be suffering some myopia is to look at its competition too broadly. It says it is competing for the relaxation and stimulation time and spend and at the company level it only truly acknowledges HBO.
Hopefully this will not make it blind to any drift and shift in consumer demand or innovations in terms of supply.
Jacques de Cock is a faculty member at London School of Marketing