Disney+ tops 100M paid subscribers just 16 months after launch

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
Posted:
in General Discussion
At its annual shareholder meeting, Disney has revealed that the Disney+ streaming service has reached 100 million paying subscribers just 16 months after it launched, Disney CEO Bob Chapek has announced.

Credit: Disney
Credit: Disney


The announcement comes about a month after Disney announced that it had reached nearly 95 million subscribers. Chapek's updated numbers indicate that Disney+ gained about five million subscribers in the time since, likely on the strength of "WandaVision."

"The enormous success of Disney+, which has now surpassed 100 million subscribers, has inspired us to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content," Chapek said in statement.

Disney+ launched in November 2019. Initially, it set an initial subscriber goal of 60 to 90 million by 2024. The streaming platform eclipsed that goal in November 2020 when it hit 73.7 million subscribers. Currently, it now expects to gain 230 million to 260 million paying customers by 2024.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Disney+ saw exceptional growth. At one point it gained 16.5 million customers in just 10 days. Back in October 2020, Disney even began reorganizing its business to shift its focus to online streaming.

Apple still hasn't revealed subscriber numbers for its Apple TV+ service, which launched a few weeks before Disney+. Although Apple TV+ doesn't appear to have reached the same level of growth, Apple in January said it had 600 million paid subscribers across all of its services.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    CloudTalkinCloudTalkin Posts: 916member
    "Hey Netflix!  NETFLIX!! Yeah, you.  Your neck... I'm comin' for it."
    - 3am drunk Disney at a strip club
  • Reply 2 of 8
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,198member
    WandaVision is such a mess, like watching a CG version of Lost. And The Mandalorian? It’s Disney’s take on the John Wick movies. People are clearly starved for good content.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    MustSeeUHDTVMustSeeUHDTV Posts: 304member
    Disney+ is doing it right. They have everything on their subscription service.

    I thought Paramount+ was going to be the exact same thing and have all its movie titles there, but alas it does not. It is still just basically CBS All Access.......

    I haven't really opened up my Free AppleTV account. Maybe 1 episode of Snoopy and 10 minutes of the Beastie Boys Documentary....but I do plan to see the Billy Ellish Doc, Mankind, Ted Lasso, Morning Show, and Greyhound
    edited March 2021
  • Reply 4 of 8
    mike1mike1 Posts: 3,279member
    cpsro said:
    WandaVision is such a mess, like watching a CG version of Lost. And The Mandalorian? It’s Disney’s take on the John Wick movies. People are clearly starved for good content.

    Well, that's your opinion.
    CloudTalkinJapheymknelsonRayz2016chemengin1
  • Reply 5 of 8
    cloudguycloudguy Posts: 323member
    Amazingly Netflix wasn't doing this well even back when they were the preferred streaming outlet for Disney movies.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,356member
    It's all about quantity and quality (of content).

    Disney+, imho, currently has the best combination of both. No surprises here, they have huge head start and a deep pool of content to swim in.

    Apple TV+ is strong on quality, but still too shallow on quantity. Calling it a shallow pool is generous. It's more like a "really nice" kiddie pool. 
  • Reply 7 of 8
    xander04xander04 Posts: 5member
    Watch that number plummet rapidly once the price increase kicks in. 
    Gone from 59 to 79 a year or 8 quid a month. 
    I cancelled on seeing that. 
    Add that to cost of Netflix / Apple TV+ (when they start charging) and all the other players out there something will have to give. 
    People don’t have the disposable income to pay for all these companies trying to get in on the streaming market. 
    Domestic home the devices and broadband provision. It’s costing best part of £200 a month plus the phone contracts for everyone. 
    Crazy. 
  • Reply 8 of 8
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    Disney+ has some good content but the tech is garbage. The Vizio TV app is absolutely useless. We had to hook up a newer MacBook to get playback at all, because the TV freezes and stalls (it’s a recent TV, no other streaming services on it have this specific problem... though they ALL suck for various reasons, especially latency).

    The website has poor video resolution (dunno if it’s lower resolution, upscaled, but it’s blurry) when run on Firefox, and it causes Safari (which has a sharp picture) to reload tabs regularly, interrupting playback, sometimes as soon as 6 minutes in.

    The UI and user features are garbage.

    This is the worst piece of streaming technology I’ve seen that isn’t a pirate streaming website.

    All they had to do was replicate what other services do.
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