After hitting more than a few rough patches during the last twelve months, Netflix is definitely on the rebound.
Once again, Netflix has topped Apple as the proverbial online movie money making giant.
According to the latest statistics from research firm IHS, Netflix’s share of market revenue between 2010 and 2011 grew tenfold.
Perhaps most impressively, however, is that by the close of 2011, Netflix’s percentage of the online movie market share sat at 44%. Since 2009, Apple’s market share has fallen from well above 70% to just 32% by the end of last year.
“We are in the midst of a significant change in the way people pay to consume movies online,” says Dan Cryan, IHS research director for digital media.
“All the significant growth in revenue in the U.S. online movie business in 2011 was generated by rental business models,” he says, “which provide temporary access, not permanent ownership. Rental delivers unlimited consumption with a low monthly fee for older titles as well as cheap rentals of new releases, providing the kind of value that online consumers want. In contrast, EST, which is much more profitable for studios on a per-transaction basis, is stuck in the doldrums.”