Netflix vs…who?
Recently, NewTeeVee posted an article that highlighted some announcements made at a recent Netflix meeting. The most interesting, as demonstrated by the article’s headline, is that Netflix’s biggest competitor will be dvd kiosks. What? Yes, kiosks, those (usually) red-and-white boxes that rent out movies for a buck a piece. That equals about nine movies a month when compared to Netflix’s 1-at-a-time subscription plan. Now, I know that these kiosks must have low overhead because the owners of the kiosks don’t have to pay what a brick-and-mortar like Blockbuster does. Things like full-time employees, air conditioning and electric bills, and the actual rental cost of the building itself. So, it must be pretty easy to make money with these machines. But what does it say about the brick-and-mortars when they aren’t even mentioned as a top player? This tells me that they are out of the game. They can’t compete with Netflix’s online-streaming and let’s face it, they barely try. Heck, for the price of two ro three blockbuster films ($4.99 last I checked in the L.A. area) I could get BOTH Netflix’s 1-at-a-time and a dvd or two from one of those kiosks. As for the kiosks themselves, they sure have great profit potential. I’m not sure what their margins or start-up costs are, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t bring in a good return. As for the kiosks actually beating Netflix? Not a chance. So then, who else will compete with Netflix? Consumers need competition in the marketplace. The only place that competition is likely to come from is other streaming video and content providers. More on this later.
