Twenty-five years after launching its DVD rental service by mail, Netflix is finally ending what has long been a hobby for the global streaming giant.
As announced earlier this year, the company will release its last disc on Friday, September 29, marking the end of the iconic red envelopes that paved the way from conventional movie rentals (RIP Blockbuster) to the era of unlimited streaming.
After all, it’s been more than 15 years since Netflix introduced streaming video and 12 years since the company spun off its DVD business from its streaming service. Back then, the streaming part kept the Netflix name, while the DVD business was renamed Qwikster, albeit for only one month.
“DVD by mail may not last forever, but we want it to last as long as possible,” Netflix co-founder and then-CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog post.
And while Hastings’ big bet on streaming sparked controversy at the time, it quickly yielded generous results, as this graph from Statista shows. In 2011, Netflix’s revenue from combining DVD and streaming services was $3.2 billion. Last year, the company earned $31.5 billion from streaming alone, while the DVD business contributed less than $150 million, or 0.5 percent.
Despite being hugely popular in its day, the business of mailing DVDs could never have expanded the way streaming has. In January 2016, Netflix was launched in 130 countries simultaneously.
