Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?

An article by MarketWatch includes comments from Goldman Sachs Analyst Heath Terry, who suggests the possible intent of Netflix behind targeting the HD plan. “We believe a targeted price change like this is designed to reduce excessive password sharing by incentivizing users to switch to the 1-screen plan,” Terry said.

The price of both single screen streaming plans and the two-screen HD plan is the same at $7.99. An important question is whether password sharing outside the home is really a piracy threat to major companies like Netflix.

The answer to this is no, but this does not mean that it is not prevalent, the report says. In a study earlier this year, Parks Associates found that nearly 57% of the U.S. households access an over-the-top video account, which could be Netflix, Hulu or HBO Go, but 11% of Netflix, 10% of Hulu Plus and 5% of Amazon Prime Instant Video subscribers make use of an account for which payments are made by someone else.

From the article "Netflix Password Sharing: Is It Piracy?" by Aman Jain.

Previously In The News

The FCC Pulled A Game-Changer

While government is often well intentioned, the end result is often lacking. This ruling, however, is huge and will affect everyone within the TV hardware and software ecosystems, from content creator...

Security Mechanisms For Smart Homes

As devices in the home connect to the Internet, they expose our homes to hackers. With Parks Associates predicting more than 50 million connected homes by 2020, it's time for developers to make protec...

UK Wearables Market Second In Europe

"The expansion of mobile device platforms to wearable form factors creates many opportunities for developers to build new services and applications," said Harry Wang, director, health and mobile produ...

Are Smartphones Too Big?

According to research firm Parks Associates, one-third of Apple iPhone owners still have a model that is more than two years old, compared with 30% of Samsung phone owners. And several consumers in...