Disney Plus to Hit 25 Million Subscribers by the End of the First Quarter, Analyst Says
It seems Disney+’s reign is not coming to an end anytime soon. The streaming service, which launched on Nov. 12, is projected to hit 25 million users by the end of the first quarter, according to Rosenblatt Securities analyst Bernie McTernan. That number was originally thought to be 21 million, CNBC reports.
According to McTernan, awareness of Disney+, as well as getting viewers hooked on the service, has kept it trending higher and higher on his company’s surveys. “For Disney+ subscribers, 29 percent indicated they unsubscribed from another streaming service as a result of subscribing to Disney+, and 9 percent specifically indicating they unsubscribed to Netflix,” McTernan said.
Though the company won’t be releasing its official numbers until its quarterly reports in February, reports came out in November saying the company amassed 10 million subscribers only 24 hours after launching. A report from app analytics company, Apptopia, revealed Disney+ was downloaded 3.2 million times to mobile devices and garnered 1.3 million hours of viewership in its first 24 hours. It immediately became the number one app in the Apple iOS app store in both the US and Canada, and in the Netherlands — where it’s was available since September as part of a free beta test — it was at number two.
Since then, various surveys have also evaluated how Disney+ fares against Netflix with investment bank, Piper Jaffray, finding that roughly a third of Netflix users would be open to getting Disney+ or have already added on the new service. However, the survey also found that though Disney+ has gained favor in the market, Netflix subscribers still remain loyal to the brand.
A separate survey from Bank of America found that 6.5 percent of respondents who use both services said they had plans to cancel their Netflix subscriptions. Analysts Nat Schindler and Justin Post were cynical of the results, however, disbelieving that respondents would actually follow through on their plans. They stated, “We are skeptical that much of this churn is incremental or will be realized, with Bloomberg reporting Netflix had seen no increase in cancellations on 11/22, 10 days after the Disney+ launch.”
In fact, a previous Bank of America survey found that, overall cancellation intentions for Netflix fell slightly from 5 percent to 4 percent, with 65 percent of respondents saying Disney+ wasn’t a good substitute for Netflix, while 33 percent said it was.