Disney+ hits 86.8M paying users, hikes monthly subscription fee
Disney+ has grown to 86.8 million paying subscribers, an increase of 13 million in the two months since it last reported user numbers.
Credit: Disney
CEO Bob Chapek announced the new subscriber counts during the company's virtual investor presentation on Thursday. The updated count represents new launches in Latin America, including the critical region of Brazil.
The Disney streaming service last reported subscriber numbers in November, when it announced that it had 73.7 million paying subscribers as of Oct. 3, 2020 -- a full year after it launched. In August, it said it had 57.5 million subscribers, just a few months earlier.
Disney chairman of international operations Rebecca Campbell said about 30% of the 86.8 million subscribers comes from Disney+ Hotstar in India.
Disney+ is no stranger to surges in user growth. From the end of March to early April, the streaming service gained about 16.5 million paying subscribers in just 10 days. It also famously gained 10 million signups on its first day of service.
Although Apple launched its Apple TV+ service a few weeks before Disney+, the Cupertino tech giant's streaming service doesn't appear to have seen the same level of success.
Apple hasn't disclosed subscriber counts for Apple TV+, but says it has 585 million paying subscribers across all of its Services. Sources suggest it's off to a lackluster start. The broader Services category has remained a bright spot throughout 2020.
Update: Disney on Thursday also announced a new services bundle that includes Disney+, ESPN+ and commercial-free Hulu for $18.99 a month. The bundle comes at a $6 premium over a similar offering that presents Hulu with ads.
Further, ESPN+ subscriptions will be accessible via the Hulu app in 2021.
Disney also announced plans to raise the price of Disney+ from $6.99 to $7.99 a month starting in March 2021.
Credit: Disney
CEO Bob Chapek announced the new subscriber counts during the company's virtual investor presentation on Thursday. The updated count represents new launches in Latin America, including the critical region of Brazil.
The Disney streaming service last reported subscriber numbers in November, when it announced that it had 73.7 million paying subscribers as of Oct. 3, 2020 -- a full year after it launched. In August, it said it had 57.5 million subscribers, just a few months earlier.
Disney chairman of international operations Rebecca Campbell said about 30% of the 86.8 million subscribers comes from Disney+ Hotstar in India.
Disney+ is no stranger to surges in user growth. From the end of March to early April, the streaming service gained about 16.5 million paying subscribers in just 10 days. It also famously gained 10 million signups on its first day of service.
Although Apple launched its Apple TV+ service a few weeks before Disney+, the Cupertino tech giant's streaming service doesn't appear to have seen the same level of success.
Apple hasn't disclosed subscriber counts for Apple TV+, but says it has 585 million paying subscribers across all of its Services. Sources suggest it's off to a lackluster start. The broader Services category has remained a bright spot throughout 2020.
Update: Disney on Thursday also announced a new services bundle that includes Disney+, ESPN+ and commercial-free Hulu for $18.99 a month. The bundle comes at a $6 premium over a similar offering that presents Hulu with ads.
Further, ESPN+ subscriptions will be accessible via the Hulu app in 2021.
Disney also announced plans to raise the price of Disney+ from $6.99 to $7.99 a month starting in March 2021.
Comments
Also, even when Disney troubled in the mid to late 80s, whether Apple would have had the money to buy it is debatable. Sure stuff like "The Black Cauldron" and "The Brave Little Toaster" had then bleeding red ink all over the place, but Disney still had their studio lots, a very valuable film library, a cable network, theme parks and the merchandising empire. Even if Apple had mortgaged themselves to the hilt to buy those assets, what would Apple have done with them anyway? Disney is what they are today because of a string of outstanding people - Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, John Lasseter, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek etc. - made excellent creative and business decisions. Without that, Disney would be MGM/UA (went bankrupt and now only exists on paper), Columbia (owned by Sony), Warner Bros (owned by AT&T), Paramount (owned by Viacom) or Universal (owned by Comcast). All of whom were much bigger entertainment companies than Disney was in the 1980s.
When Disney+ began rolling out worldwide, Disney automatically updated the HotStar app to Disney+ Hotstar and existing subscribers of HotStar automatically became subscribers of Disney+.
I never would have bothered to subscribe to Disney+ on its own, but having sort of gotten it free, I enjoyed The Mandalorian and the occasional movie.
I assumed the kids would be into it, considering the wealth of Marvel stuff, but surprisingly they weren't. YouTube and Minecraft is where they mostly spend their time.
Although they claim compatibilty with Nvidia Shield TV, Disney+ loads, 'works' but then gives an error 39 message when trying to play content, which in 'Disney speak' could be just about anything when trying to hunt it down.
At first I suspected HDMI cable protocol issues so I upgraded the cables and tried a direct connection to my TV. Same problem. I still think there could be an HDMI issue with the TV and/or the receiver, both of which are old. HD is all I need.
Anyway, I did various live chats with Disney+ support (getting escalated along the way) only for them to come out with 'some models of Nvidia Shield TV 2017 are not compatible with Disney+'.
It's true that my shield is on the base 8.0.0 experience because I prefer not to' fix' things aren't broken, but if in the end, the 2017 Shield is incompatible it will just reinforce my desire not to continue once the three months are up.
As a cheap compatibility check I've ordered a Fire Stick for another (secondary) TV to see if it works. If it does, I'll try it on my main TV to see if it works there too.
It's strange when people intentionally use unfair metrics to bash Apple .It's like when iKnockoff morons compare the sales of 1,000 knockoff Apple companies to trash iPhone.
With that said Apple is very different from Disney so even then it's more like saying the NBA is better than the NFL.
I hate that sexist bi*** too but why the obsession with her? Every streaming thread has a commenter obsessing over Oprah.
It's been rock solid so far.