It’s aalways shocking when a successful company not only has a solid reputation with it’s customers, but also seems smart enough to actually pay attention to their customer base’s actual needs and patterns. Case in point - Netflix has come out and publicly stated that they know their current DVD mail rental system is destined to pretty much die in the not-so-distant future, and they’re taking preemptive action to survive after people stop wanting to pop shiny disks into plastic boxes in order to be entertained.

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix Inc, said he expects the company to have 10 million subscribers by next year, but the DVD-by-mail business will peak in as soon as five years.

“We think the by-mail business is very strong but will probably peak in the next five years,” said Hastings at the Netflix Investor Day in San Francisco on Wednesday. A slide at the presentation showed the peak in five to 10 years.

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