Netflix, the US television and film streaming powerhouse has finally launched in the UK for £5.99/month or €6.99 in Ireland – competing with Amazon‘s Lovefilm and the upcoming YouView from the UK broadcasters.
Netflix will be available to stream on a variety of devices – from PCs to iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, to games consoles like the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, to smart TVs, and many more. And it will offer content from the BBC, ITV, Channel4, Disney UK & Ireland, CBS, Lionsgate UK, MGM, Miramax, Momentum Pictures, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, and Viacom – quite a bit then. To make it all the more social, Netflix will also be tying into Facebook‘s social graph. To get new users hooked, they are offering everyone who signs up a one month free trial.
The question with this launch, however, is whether Netflix has just been too slow to reach the UK market. Just 12 months ago, Netflix could have stormed into the UK and been first out the gate with a broad content base, and already have the service set up on numerous devices due to its earlier availability in the US. Today the market is already dominated by Amazon’s Lovefilm that offers content from almost all the very same sources being offered by Netflix, and with YouView appearing quite soon with the full backing of the UK’s major broadcasters – it is already pretty crowded.