Tony Zameczkowski, Netflix's vice president for business development in Asia, tells us what the near future holds for streaming entertainment
Most people in Asia know Netflix as a streaming service, but it actually started in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail company, before streaming technology even existed. We started streaming shows in 2007, and in 2013 we took the radical first step of producing our own content like House of Cards, which proved a streaming service could make high-quality content. This in turn created the phenomenon of “binge-watching” because we released all of a season’s episodes at one go, unlike traditional studios, which released episodes once a week.
Since then, we’ve had many more firsts. Netflix’s vision was always to become a global service and we hit this milestone in 2016, when we launched in 130 countries. The pandemic and its rolling lockdowns have also significantly boosted subscriber numbers, with Netflix adding 37 million new subscribers in 2020 alone, for a total of over 200 million subscribers. Captive audiences no doubt also played a role in creating Netflix’s biggest show ever, the South Korean survival drama Squid Game. With 2.1 billion hours viewed worldwide, it was the most-watched title in eight Asian markets in the first week of streaming.
But I’d say we’re only at the beginning of the streaming revolution—and Netflix’s evolution. Here’s why.
Asia is on the rise
Broadly speaking, people in Asia prefer to watch on the go, unlike in the US and Europe, where users tend to watch on bigger screens. They also appreciate a wide variety of content, they love watching our global content as much as they love the shows made in Asia. Our first original Korean movie was Okja, which we followed with the Kingdom series. Both were successful, but came nowhere near the true global phenomenon that was Squid Game. Riding the K-wave, the other reason why Squid Game worked was because it featured universal themes that everyone could relate to.
This shows us that great stories can come from anywhere. We’re currently creating more content from India, Korea and Japan; and we have the unique scale to take this local content to a global stage.
Many countries in Asia are moving towards cashless economies, which has pushed us to rethink how we provide our members and potential members with other payment options. For example, we’ve partnered with Go Pay in Indonesia and introduced mobile wallets as a payment option, which has proved popular.
We will also continue to optimise our product, expanding our content delivery network, personalising the algorithm and finessing streaming quality.