Disney+ gained 16.5M subscribers in just 10 days thanks to coronavirus

From the end of March to early April, Disney's breakout streaming service, Disney+, gained some 16.5 million paid subscribers in just 10 days, according to the company's second quarter earnings report.

According to the company's quarterly earnings report, released on Tuesday, Disney+ had 33.5 million subscribers on March 28, 2020. On April 8, just 10 days later, Disney announced that it had hit 50 million subscribers.

The growth spurt was temporary, however, as Disney+ had 54.5 million paid subscribers as of May 4.

Disney also said that its direct-to-consumer and international revenues for the quarter grew from $1.1 billion to $4.1 billion.

Since March, much of the world has been under mandated stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, which likely played a part in Disney's subscriber boom. Other contributing factors include the service's official launch into Europe and India.

The Disney streaming platform originally launched in November 2019, just two weeks after Apple's Apple TV+ service.

During Apple's last earnings call on April 30, the company said that its Services business remained a bright spot during an economically tough quarter, but provided no updated statistics on Apple TV+ subscriber count.