Disney Plus is one of the most high-profile entries into the streaming wars, and on its European launch day scored 5 million downloads, according to new figures.

Launching on the 24th March in the U.K., Ireland, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, in just 24 hours the service’s mobile app garnered five million downloads according to App Annie figures reported by Variety.

Though the figures are limited to just mobile device app downloads, rather than account sign-ups, it gives a rough litmus test of the service’s popularity among a set of markets with time and appetite for Disney’s back-catalogue.

Some caveats are necessary: each account can download the Disney Plus app onto multiple devices, four of which can stream simultaneously.

Due to the high usage of streaming services and video calls, Europe’s internet providers are under significant strain, and as a result Disney Plus is launching with lower quality streams as standard – similar to measures put in place by Netflix and YouTube – in order to reduce the burden placed on networks as many people work from home, entertain children, or indeed themselves.

In markets where Disney Plus was already present, namely the US, App Annie data from December showed that people spent an average of three hours and 10 minutes in the app compared to four hours 20 minutes for Netflix, though this data doesn’t include desktop or smart TV viewing. As of the 3rd Feb, the service had drawn in 28.6 million subscribers.

As far back as November, ahead of launch, data from the AudienceProject showed that the company was launching into a market hungry for Disney content, even amid the crowded market that has come to be known as the Streaming Wars.

What’s interesting about the development of the Streaming Wars, as Disney Plus rolls out across the world, has been its ability to coexist with Netflix as part of users’ media diets. App Annie data reported by TVB Europe suggests that as many as 25% of Netflix users on iPhone in the US also subscribe to Disney Plus.

Time will tell, however, as the November data shows people are considering unsubscribing from either Amazon Prime or Netflix to make way for Disney. The precise economic impacts of the current situation are difficult to predict, but expect pressure.


Sourced from Variety, TVB Europe; additional content by WARC staff