Netflix has spread its streaming movie and TV show service to tons of devices, beginning with the PC and then adding all three game consoles, the iPhone and iPod Touch and lots of set-top boxes, DVD players and Blu-Ray players. Now the long wait for the Netflix streaming app for phones that use Google's Android operating system is coming to an end.
In a post on Netflix's blog site today, it was announced that the Netflix app is now available to download for free via the Android Market for a select series of Android 2.2 and 2.3 based phones. They include the HTC Incredible, the HTC Nexus One, the HTC Evo 4G, the HTC G2 and the Samsung Nexus S. In the blog post, Netflix's Roma De states, "We expect to quickly add to the number of phones that can download from Android Market as we work with ecosystem partners to expand playback support."
So why can't the Netflix app be run on more Android-based phones at the moment? Roma De states in the blog post, "One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones." According to the blog post, Netflix has to test each phone that has the Android OS. Only those that can support streaming playback of video can run the Netflix app, at least at the moment. Roma De states, "We anticipate that many of these technical challenges will be resolved in the coming months and that we will be able to provide a Netflix application that will work on a large majority of Android phones."
Netflix recently announced that it has signed about 24 million subscribers to its streaming video service and has seen its stock price go sky high as more and more people sign up. The expansion into Android-based phones could signal another boost in Netflix's subscriber base.
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