Netflix Inc., which in 2006 expects to generate revenue of almost $1 billion by allowing subscribers to choose their DVD rentals online and receive them by mail, sees downloading as the company’s ultimate future, CEO Reed Hastings told a national television audience Sunday evening.
Hastings told reporter Leslie Stahl during a profile on “60 Minutes” that Netflix has been preparing for Internet movie downloads since the company was formed a decade ago. “We intend to lead the entire market,” he says. “What we do now is a stepping stone to a big future.”
The profile centered on the rapid rise of Netflix, which mails out 1.5 million DVDs each business day and is ranked as one of the U.S. Postal Service’s top 10 top mailers of first-class postage.
The interview also focused on Netflix’s movie recommendation engine and database, which can personalize an inventory of 65,000 movie titles for customers based on information gleaned from profiles of more than 5 million subscribers. “We take a quantitative approach and let the customer decide,” says Hastings, one of the keynote speakers at the Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibtion.
Netflix is No. 21 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites.
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