Disney+ announced that they now have 100 million global paid subscribers, just 16 months after launching the service. CEO Bob Chapek announced the milestone at the company’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The service is now available in 59 countries around the world.
“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,” Mr. Chapek said. “In fact, we set a target of 100+ new titles per year, and this includes Disney Animation, Disney Live Action, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Our direct-to-consumer business is the Company’s top priority, and our robust pipeline of content will continue to fuel its growth.”
Following the release of “Soul” directly on Disney+ on Christmas Day, the company announced that they had 94.9 million subscribers as of January 2nd, 2021 (their fiscal Q1 2021). In total, the company added 68.4 million in 2020. Disney has said that ~30% of subscribers are through their Disney+ Hotstar service, meaning that ~70 million are outside of India.
During Investor Day in December, CEO Bob Chapek announced the streamer had climbed to 86.8 million subscribers as of Dec. 2. In November, the company reported that the service was at 73.7 million subscribers at the end of September. This was a 16.2 million climb from the previous quarter, when they reported they reached 57.5 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter in June 2020, but were at 60.5 million subscribers as of August 3rd.
In January, competing service Netflix announced they reached 203.66 million subscribers in Q4 2020. The company added a massive 8.51 million this quarter (compared to 8.76 million in the same quarter last year). For the full year, Netflix added a record 37 million paid memberships.