Disney+ Enjoys Record Downloads, Should Netflix be Worried?
Data shows that Disney+ is gaining subscribers and market share in the intensifying streaming wars.
The streaming wars will continue to ramp up. Netflix has been a long-time leader in streaming, but has been undercut by existing competition from Amazon Prime TV, Hulu, CBS All Access, Apple TV+ and Disney+, which all threaten to take market share. More emerging competitors, like AT&T’s HBO Max and Comcast’s Peacock, which will launch in 2020, continue to enter the market and pose new threats as well.
Disney+ is steadily gaining ground, offering its service for cheaper and featuring content like Star Wars’ “The Mandalorian,” which, thanks to its pop culture phenomenon character Baby Yoda, has quickly become the most in-demand TV show in both the U.S. and the world.
Disney reported 10 million sign ups after its first day, and Google’s recently released annual search trends report shows that Disney+ was the highest trending search in the U.S. for 2019.
The company now serves about 41.5 million viewers in the United States, including subscribers for its other streaming businesses, Hulu and ESPN+, compared with about 61 million for industry leader Netflix Inc.
Apptopia said Disney+ competitors, including Netflix and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video, remain largely unaffected in terms of their performance during the same period.
While users in the United States spent about 200 million hours on the Disney+ app during the first four weeks of its launch, Netflix users have spent about 1 billion hours during the same period, according to Apptopia.
Disney stock is up over 6% since it launched the streaming service, while Netflix shares have only gained less than 2% during that same period, in comparison. Apple stock is up just over 3% since then.