On the official Netflix blog, Roma De from the product team has an exciting announcement for Netflix lovers with Android phones: They have begun to roll out a Netflix app for the platform. And like the iOS app, it is free.
But wait – here’s the rub: It will only available at launch for 5 Android OS phones that have “requisite playback support.” Those five phones are:
- HTC Incredible with Android 2.2
- HTC Nexus One with Android 2.2, 2.3
- HTC Evo 4G with Android 2.2
- HTC G2 with Android 2.2
- Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3
Here’s what they say about the app coming to more Android phones in the future:
Because the platform has evolved so rapidly, there are some significant challenges associated with developing a streaming video application for this ecosystem. One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback.
We are aggressively qualifying phones and look forward to expanding the list of phones on which the Netflix app will be supported. We anticipate that many of these technical challenges will be resolved in the coming months and that we will be able to provide a Netflix application that will work on a large majority of Android phones.
With the app, users can watch streaming video through Wi-Fi or 3G, although 3G streaming will be quite the data hog. Users can also resume watching where they left off on their TV or computer.
Last August, Netflix launched their app for iOS. And and the end of April HBO entered the world of phone-streaming video with their release of their HBO GO app for iPhone and Android.