Netflix's Global Expansion

After having entered a few European markets in 2015, Netflix made a surprise announcement on Wednesday saying that the streaming service is now available in 130 additional countries. Looking at the map below illustrates that Netflix is now available almost everywhere in the world, with the most notable blind spots being China, Syria and Crimea.

Netflix had first expanded outside the United States in 2010, when its streaming offering became available in Canada. In the past few years, the company’s international push had picked up pace but no one really predicted the service to reach almost universal coverage so soon. Discussing the omission of China, CEO Reed Hastings stated that his company is still working on bringing its services to the largest market in the world but warned that it could take some time to gain approval by the Chinese government.

As of September 2015, Netflix had 43 million domestic and 26 million international streaming subscribers. Given yesterday’s announcement, it'll be interesting to observe how quickly the latter number will increase.