William Gallagher
The new subscription television service from Disney has blown past 10 million subscribers within its first 24 hours of operation.
According to CNBC, the new Disney+ streaming subscription service signed up in excess of 10 million users within its first day of operation. It did so despite reports of teething problems with he service that meant some users were not able to sign up or to stream Disney+ content.
It's not clear how widespread those problems were or how the number of subscribers might have been greater without them. Additionally, since a new subscriber gets a seven-day free trial period, it's too early to tell what proportion of the 10 million will continue once they are required to pay.
In a similar move to how Apple is offering a year of its Apple TV+ service to customers who buy iPhones or other devices, Disney+ is being made available for free to users of Verizon. Disney has also not broken out how many subscribers that offer has brought.
For comparison, however, Netflix added 517,000 subscribers in its last financial quarter. That company has been streaming video since 2007 and has a total installed user base of around 160 million, though. Still, Netflix had been expected to gain 802,000 new users in that time so its numbers are less than expected.
CBS took five years to reach a total of 8 million subscribers for both its Showtime and CBS All Access streaming services. And Hulu, owned by Disney, has a total of almost 27 million paying subscribers but began in 2007.
Apple has not released any statistics about its Apple TV+ service which launched on November 1. However Variety claims information that "millions" of viewers are watching that service. Apple TV+ also offers a free seven day trial to all users, and the vague and unsubstantiated viewing figures do not distinguish between paying and trial customers.
According to CNBC, Disney's stock was up over 3% on this news and on the same day, Netflix shares were down 1%.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
11 Comments
Signed up yesterday. The app through my Apple TV 4K looks awesome. I played snippets of movies for hours, just checking out picture quality. It didn't seem fully integrated with the Apple TV app yet, but that may take a little more time.
Was very pleasantly surprised with The Mandalorian. I think Disney has a hit with this series, if they can maintain the quality of the first episode going forward.
Ran into a few glitches where video dropped out and the app crashed, but was able to get back in. One can imagine a big server farm somewhere outside Orlando, creaking under the load, with Goofy and Donald running around frantically, pushing buttons and getting tangled up in wires. If they took on that many subscribers - a large percentage of them browsing and starting and stopping content all at once - without any catastrophic failures, I'd say it's a win.
There's a lot of UHD/Atmos content, and a very deep catalog. A year's subscription costs less than one trip out to the movies (with popcorn, candy and drinks) for a family of four.
This is surely going to be an inflection point for this business.
Yes, but how many old users left Netflix? I left.
Disney+ not available here. What’s it like? Name the kinds of stuff on there, please.