Netflix proudly issued a press release this morning announcing the online movie rental business has surpassed 10 million total subscribers.
"Ten million subscribers is a symbolic but meaningful achievement for our company," said Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and CEO. "From a subscriber standpoint, Netflix is singularly focused on making movie enjoyment easy, and we'll strive to deliver on that promise in added and improved ways in the years to come."
After first launching in September 1999, Netflix has reportedly added subscribers "at an average annual rate of nearly 30 percent."
Since launching online streaming through the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and other devices, Netflix has added more than 600,000 Internet subscribers since the start of 2009. It's highly likely that other standalone Blu-ray disc players will also receive streaming Netflix support, which has been a popular feature since being announced last fall.
Moving forward, the company hopes to have between 10.1 million and 10.3 million subscribers by the end of the first quarter. If all goes well, Netflix hopes to have 10.6 to 11.3 million subscribers before the end of the year.
Even though Netflix has been able to successfully eliminate most of its competitors, Blockbuster recently announced its Total Access movie rental service will soon include video game rentals -- something Netflix doesn't support, or plan to offer any time in the future.
