Andre Yoskowitz
13 Nov 2010 14:16
Greg Peters, head of Netflix product development, has said today that Netflix for Android will hit a few 'select' smartphones beginning early next year.
Currently, Netflix streaming apps are available on the iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 devices.
Says the company via their blog:
We regard Android as an exciting technology that drives a range of great devices that our members could use to instantly watch TV shows and movies from Netflix. We are eager to launch on these devices and are disappointed that we haven’t been able to do so already. The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy. Although we don’t have a common platform security mechanism and DRM, we are able to work with individual handset manufacturers to add content protection to their devices.