On Thursday AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson was on CNBC to talk about AT&T and the future of DIRECTV in the face of cord cutting.
During the conversation two main topics came up: cord cutting and DIRECTV NOW.
According to AT&T’s CEO, cord cutting is no surprise as it should be expected that as costs go up that Americans would decide to opt out of traditional pay TV.
AT&T’s CEO went on to talk about how DIRECTV NOW is hoping that DIRECTV NOW will be the answer. According to Randal Stephenson, DIRECTV NOW has had a “terrific amount of success,” and from AT&T’s point of view he is right.
Just a few months after launch, DIRECTV NOW is tied with PlayStation Vue for subscribers at about 400,000 each. That is a number that took Sony several years to achieve.
One has to wonder how long AT&T can keep up this rapid growth. Early on it was pushed by aggressive early promotional deals—from lower prices to device deals—with some of the most popular device and price deals already ending.
Though there is still a lot of room for growth. DIRECTV NOW has yet to come to Roku players, the number one streaming player in the United States. Roku controls just over 50% of all player sales in 2016, and according to recent surveys about 70% of our readers own a Roku.
So DIRECTV NOW still has a lot of growth they can see in 2017, the only question now is how competition from Sling, PlayStation Vue, and new entries such as YouTube and Hulu will effect AT&T.
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