Close to a month ago, Disney
announced that their exclusive digital streaming service, Disney+, has
surpassed a milestone that they had estimated would take about four years.
Considering the limited coverage of their platform at its 2019 launch, pegging
2023 as the year they will reach 90 million regular subscribers was a cautious
deadline. As of January 2021 however, they were already at 94.9 million subs. While
the company then set a new milestone for 2024, there is still a
million-subscriber mark that looks pretty close to being cleared: 100 million.
Considering the pace the subscriber count has been going, surpassing it soon
was elementary.
As told by The Verge, Disney+ now has more than 100 million subscribers around
the world where it is available. This time Disney made the news known during
their annual shareholders meeting. A press release on the matter was given by
company CEO Bob Chapek, noting the unprecedented success and growth of their
streaming service, and their determination to pay back the subscribers by
adopting a new target of releasing new additional content. If more than 100
titles a year is not an ambitious goal, then nobody knows what is.
The fact that Disney+ somehow got
past 100 million subscriptions in 16 months or less than a year and half, is
getting the attention of the streaming community as a whole. Some analysts
however note that subscriber counts do not always reflect revenue gain. To
elaborate, some of the Disney+ subs, particularly outside North America, are
likely not directly to the main streaming service (which charges subscription
rates in dollars), but in affiliated local streaming like India’s Disney+
Hotstar, which has lower rates in the local currency of their covered areas.
But in terms of subscriber count alone, the feat of Disney+ cannot be
discounted.
Speculation abounds on how the
sub count for Disney+ jumped from over 94 million to over 100 million in the
first two months of 2021. The likely factors are the popularity of the MCU
series “WandaVision,” and the March 5 streaming release of animated film “Raya
and the Last Dragon.” So long as Disney churns out these new content and
Disney+ originals, the subs look like they will only skyrocket.
Image courtesy of MacRumors.com
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