HISTORY
Established in the United States, the Netflix model began as a pay per order movie rental delivery service. Customers could order DVDs online and have them delivered directly to their door for a nominal fee. This offering became a subscription model in 1999, when customers were able to pay a monthly fee for unlimited rentals with no due dates, late charges, or shipping and handling costs. After being rejected for acquisition in 2000 by Blockbuster for an offer of $50 million, Netflix moved ahead on its own, and in 2005 they were actively shipping more than 1 million DVDs everyday. In February of 2007, Netflix reached a milestone having delivered their billionth DVD. Fueled by the increase in DVD player’s sales in the early 2000s, Netflix had captured 12 million subscribers by March of 2010. In the same year, Netflix expanded its services into the online on-demand video streaming service. Originally the DVD delivery model was to be rebranded under the name Qwikster, however, in 2011 it was decided to retain the Netflix brand across both home delivery and online streaming platforms. Netflix had quickly become the fastest growing customer of the United States Postal Service and it regularly composed the majority of Internet traffic in North America during the evening hours. As of the end of January this year, Netflix has 57.4 million monthly subscribers, 39 million of whom are located in the United States.