When you’re a globe-spanning technology firm, you need to keep a paranoid eye on the competition. But sometimes it can be hard to work out what the competition is: disruption can come from the most unlikely corners.But even given that, Netflix has an odd definition of what it has to compete with. Not Amazon Video, not YouTube, not even old-fashioned broadcasters. No, according to the company’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, Netflix’s biggest competitor is the pesky human need to close your eyes and sleep for a third of the day.Asked about the company’s competitors at Netflix’s earnings call, Hastings said that he isn’t really concerned about Amazon and HBO “because the market is just so vast”.

Netflix has grown slower than it expected in the first three months of the year, but insists that the opportunity for growth is ”gigantic”.The streaming firm added 4.95 million new subscribers in the quarter, fewer than the 5.2 million it had forecast.In the US, the firm added a third fewer new members than the same period a year ago, while overseas members fell 22%.Netflix blamed the drop partly on shifting some of its popular shows to the second quarter of the year.The firm said its House of Cards series, whoch last year debuted in the first quarter but for this year has been pushed into the second quarter, was the main reason for the lower-than-expected subscriber growth.Netflix said it still expected to add 8.15 million new members in total for the first half of the year, just below the 8.42 it added in the first half of last year.