Just over a year after its launch, Disney says it has already reached the amazing milestone of 100 million subscribers.
The company announced the milestone in its annual campaign shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday. Disney chief Bob Chapek said in a statement that the success of the streaming platform inspired the company “to be even more ambitious and significantly increase our investment in developing high-quality content”.
Chapek said – how the company did previously—That this includes a goal of more than 100 new titles on the platform each year from Disney + properties, including Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic.
“Our direct consumer business is the cThe company’s top priority and our robust content pipeline will continue to fuel its growth, ”added Chapek. Disney said that plans to invest billions in developing content not only for the Disney + service, but also for the Hulu and ESPN + properties in the coming years.
Among the announcements at the meeting, executive chairman and former Disney chief Bob Iger confirmed that he will step down from the company in December.
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The service’s success has undoubtedly been helped by a general increase in streaming since the pandemic, but it is probably due to the service’s exclusive and hugely popular premieres, such as Soul, The Mandalorian, and WandaVision, and a series of movie titles that instead debuted straight to the consumer. The company said last year who plans to trust and invest in Disney + exclusives to continue to attract new subscribers to the service.
According to new data from app analytics firm SensorTower, Disney + has reached about 186.5 million app installs worldwide from Google Play and iOS App Store since its launch in November 2019. The company told Gizmodo that the number represents the number of downloads from the respective app stores “at some point and is not linked to the subscriber number that Disney has shared”.
As for the content that goes to the platform in 2021, it’s probably safe to assume that Disney will continue to explore the same hybrid release model used to Raya and the Last Dragon–at least until theaters return to something close to normal operation. The film premiered last week, both in theaters and on demand at Disney’s Premier Access platform, which charges $ 30 to broadcast it before the film’s official release on Disney + on June 4.
During Tuesday’s call, Chapek reiterated the company’s position that Disney + will continue to “put the consumer in charge and let him decide when and how he wants to enjoy our films, especially as we sail our way through the pandemic.