Netflix losing subscribers - and its stock tanks

Shares are down almost 18 percent (the rest of the market is way up) on news that the video rental company is expected to have 600,000 fewer subscribers at the end of the month than it had at the end of June. The company recently changed its pricing so that customers who use both streaming and DVDs by mail end up paying a lot more than they used to - up to 60 percent more. From the LAT:

The reduction in Netflix's expected subscriber numbers came mostly in the figures for customers paying only to get DVDs through mail. The company had projected it would have 3 million DVD-only subscribers at the end of the third quarter, but now says it expects 2.2 million. Its estimate for streaming-only customers fell slightly to 9.8 million from 10 million. The company still expects 12 million people to pay for both services.

One analyst called the pricing change "a rare, large and surprising misstep." Seems inevitable that streaming will take over at some point, but perhaps Netflix jumped the gun.