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With just over a year of experience under its belt, Disney+ is turning out to be a much bigger deal for the Mouse House than even they had dreamt it would be. The app has now reached 60.5 million installs on the Google Play Store. Apparently, Disney severely under-estimated their growth trajectory and because of the pandemic, they’ve seen a lot more people signing up than they had predicted since everyone has been stuck at home.
Disney predicts that they will grow from 60 million to 90 million subscribers between now and 2024. By comparison, Netflix has 193 million subscribers and it’s been live for over a decade, so it shows some pretty impressive and rapid growth in the streaming space on Disney’s part. To put that into perspective, the company originally planned on reaching the 60 million subscribers milestone in 5 years’ time and instead has reached it in just eight months! Now that they’ve acquired so many users, their next challenge will be retaining them, which may prove to be more difficult.
While many people are holding on to their subscription to the service for its nostalgia factor and to have access to Marvel’s extensive superhero movie collection that they probably aren’t binging as much anymore, others, like myself, are addicted to shows like The Mandalorian and not much else. Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced earlier this year that they would be launching an internal streaming service called “Star” to provide mature content to those who are looking to get more out of the platform than just reliving their childhood. Mature, of course, meaning popular content that adults may enjoy and that’s not 100% just family-friendly and rated PG. Honestly, if they want to retain 60 million users, they definitely need to consider adding content that helps them compete with the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and so on.
In September, they added the Groupwatch feature which allows you to watch Disney movies and TV shows live with friends and family from anywhere, and while I haven’t used the feature but once or twice to write about it, I’m sure there are plenty of people taking advantage of it. You can also watch on your Assistant-enabled smart displays and even get a pair of Mickey Mouse ears for it too If you’re into that sort of thing.
If you’re not one of the 60 million existing Disney+ subscribers and are interested in getting in on the action, you can check out some Black Friday and Cyber Monday bundles or the trailer below to see what’s new on the service in December.
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