Despite growing competition, Netflix still offers the most top movies

Netflix offers more top movies than any of its subscription streaming rivals, according to new analysis from Piper Jaffray. Variety highlights that the company’s lineup includes 10 of 2013’s 50 best box office performers. For comparison, Amazon Prime Instant Video has just three. “Netflix is still leading by a wide margin,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson. But it’s not all bad news for Amazon; the company offers customers a decent selection of top movies that are at least two years old. So if you don’t need the latest and greatest blockbusters, Prime Instant Video isn’t a bad way to go — but it still trails Netflix, which offers acclaimed original programming like Orange is the New Black in addition to its rotating catalog of licensed films. Amazon hasn’t yet been able to produce its own original hit series.

Netflix continues to outpace Amazon.com’s subscription-video service on the content-licensing front, delivering substantially more of the top 50 movies and top 75 TV shows from the last few years, according to an analysis by Piper Jaffray & Co. “Relative to Amazon… Netflix is still leading by a wide margin,” Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Michael Olson wrote in a note Wednesday. Of the 75 top-rated television shows over the last four seasons, Netflix currently offers 32% and Amazon’s Prime Instant Video has 12%. On movies, Netflix provides more recent titles — with 10 of the 50 box-office leaders from 2013, versus three for Amazon — while Amazon’s library includes more top movies that are two years old, according to the report. Of the top 50 movies for each of the last three years, Netflix has 12%, Redbox Instant by Verizon has 7%, Amazon Prime has 6% and Hulu Plus has 1%, Piper Jaffray found. Meanwhile, Hulu’s subscription service delivers nearly three times as many recent top-rated shows as Netflix. Hulu Plus has 57% of the top 75 series from the 2013-’14 season, compared with 20% for Netflix and 9% for Amazon. Hulu is owned by Disney, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal, and was originally formed to let their respective networks deliver catch-up online viewing of their primetime shows. “While definitely a competitor, we view Hulu as increasingly less of a direct threat as Netflix focuses on original content,” Olson said.