The Walt Disney Co. said 10 million people have signed up for the Disney + streaming service since Tuesday’s launch, a significant milestone for the company.
Initial glitches suggested a rush of people attempted to access the service as soon as it was available. The sign-up numbers illustrate the success of Disney’s vaunted marketing machine and the power of the company’s entertainment brands to attract subscribers to its newly launched service.
One researcher had attempted to quantify that number, estimating 3.2 million people downloaded Disney+ on the first day, according to Apptopia, a firm that provides information about mobile apps based on its analysis of some 250,000 apps in the Apple and Android stores and other publicly available data.
The actual number was three times greater.
Users in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands spent about 1.3 million hours watching video in that first day, spending more time streaming than customers of Amazon Prime or Roku, according to Apptopia.
Netflix, with its 60 million domestic subscribers, still reigns supreme in terms of hours spent each day streaming—around 6 million int he U.S., Apptopia reports.
One of the most hotly anticipated Disney+ original series, The Mandalorian, has already leaked onto pirate networks, according to Comparitech. Unauthorized copies, or “rips,” of the Star Wars saga series started appearing on torrent sites by 3 a.m. Eastern, hours before the streaming service’s official launch.
Industry observers had anticipated that The Mandalorian would be in hot demand.
