Video subscription service of Netflix bagged in 3.1 million customers more during the fourth quarter. As a result of that the firm could deliver a performance that was better than analyst’s expectations.

The results got announced on Wednesday and it proved that Netflix is increasingly playing an important role in home and mobile entertainment.

For the fourth-quarter growth Netflix is left with twenty million subscribers at the end of 2010, which is a sixty three percent increase from 2009. Management expects to add as many as two million and eight hundred thousand subscribers in the first quarter.

Netflix Inc. earned in the tune of forty seven million, or eighty seven cents per share, in the October-December period. That was a fifty two percent increase from thirty one million, or fifty six cents per share, last year.

Analyst’s survey conducted by FactSet expected earnings of seventy one cents per share.

Revenue in the period went up by thirty four percent from the earlier year to reach five hundred and ninety six million dollars.

The shares of the firm climbed up ten percent after a forecast of added growth.

Due to the growth of Netflix’s video-rental service, the share price in the last year got tripled. To keep revenue mounting, Reed Hastings, Chief Executive Officer is taking the company outside the U. S. and adding online content. He is facing competition from Amazon. com Inc., which offers online film rentals and agreed in the last week to purchase the rest of Love Film International Ltd, which is a U. K.-based subscription service offering DVDs by mail and online.

Netfilx’s guidance is good, according to Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles who also recommended selling the shares.