Netflix has more subscribers than its biggest cable competitors combined, but that might be a bad thing (NFLX)

IMDB / Netflix

Netflix may have missed on its subscriber growth estimates for the US last quarter, in a big way, but it still has more customers than the top US cable companies.

Here is how Netflix compares to its top cable competitors in video:

1. Netflix: 47.1 million (Q2)
2. Comcast: 22.4 million (Q2)
3. Charter: about 17 million (May)

Netflix has more subscribers than Comcast and Charter combined, and it's almost as big as the entire cable video industry.

According to Business Insider Intelligence, the top nine US cable companies had 49.1 million subscribers total, adding just over 50,000 subscribers in Q1 2016. Netflix is sitting just below that level, at 47.1 million for Q2 (some of its cable competitors have yet to report their Q2 earnings).

That news might sound like a good thing for Netflix, but it actually could be a source of worry for investors who are concerned about Netflix's slowing subscriber growth. Netflix has blamed the slowdown on accidental cancellations from the new chip-enabled credit cards and on media reports, but the big fear among investors is that the slowdown is actually because Netflix has saturated the market. 

Netflix added just 160,000 new subscribers in the US last quarter.

So the question is whether Netflix's appeal can push beyond that of cable, or whether this is as big as it gets.

Correction: The subscriber counts in this post have been updated after an error by a third-party data provider.

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