Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Disney is a monster.

For perspective, Netflix took 15 years to get 57M subscribers. Disney+ launched November 12. Of course, Netflix was a different model at the time, but this is utterly impressive from Disney.

View attachment 904612
I don't know if this is a fair comparison. Netflix was the real first streaming service and streaming online and through TVs is a standard now. So, adding another service (with a huge library) is easier for the consumer to sign up without much risk.
 
  • Like
Reactions: geo88
Like Spotify and Netflix, Disney has no hardware. That means that Apple can take their time to starve Disney our. Unlike Netflix and Spotify, Disney does have alternative revenue streams so it will take a while but Apple will surpass Disney in paid subscribers in 2-3 years.
Taking in consideration Disney+'s start I doubt Apple will ever surpass them in paid subscribers.
It would be interesting to see actually how many paid subscribers Apple's services has right now, so not people that got the 1 year free option.
 
  • Like
Reactions: decypher44
At the moment there isn't really anything for me on Disney+ or AppleTV+, I am sticking with Netflix / Amazon Prime / NowTV (UK app for entertainment and movies) until they improve, which I suspect they both will. Once tehy do it will be a harder choice as I don't really want to subscribe to all 5 of them!
 
Enlighten me, please.

TV+ was intended to solve the problem of content in the Apple TV being fragmented by apps. For example, you had to go into separate apps to watch different shows (eg: HBO to watch game of thrones, Prime to watch Picard, Disney+ to watch Mandalorian). So Apple came up with the TV app as a central landing page to aggregate all these shows together so that views could access them all in one app.

However, the problem then came in that the various content streaming companies had no incentive to integrate with TV+ and let their content be muddled with those of other companies. Smaller players had less to lose, but larger, more established names like Netflix had no reason to.

So to solve this problem, Apple need to give users a reason to active visit the TV app (which would in turn incentivise these companies to support said app).

Thus, TV+ (the Apple streaming service) was born. The objective was never to go head to head with Netflix, but to give users a reason to launch the TV app (to watch Apple’s original content). Once inside, Apple is in a prime position to sell you more iTunes content and promote additional streaming services for you, the user, to customise your own “streaming bundle” after you run out of shows to watch.

As such, there is no reason for Apple to buy Disney and offer all their content for free when they could have you subscribe to Disney+ (and earn a cut of the monthly subscription fee) or purchase some of their marvel / Star Wars titles (and earn a cut in the process as well).

There is also the issue of Disney possibly being a poor fit for Apple as an acquisition target, culture-wise. As a general rule of thumb, Apple does not do large-scale acquisitions for the sake of generating revenue. Instead, they tend to acquire smaller companies borg-style which contain technology that they can propagate amongst their products (such as Touch ID on all their iOS devices).

Disney would be too large a piece of meat for Apple to swallow. While a successful enterprise in its own right, Disney doesn’t really offer anything useful that Apple can use to augment their existing Apple devices. Tim Cook already has his hands full managing Apple, and I doubt he needs to be further distracted with having to manage another company with a very different business model.

There is simply no synergy between Apple and Disney.
 
  • Like
Reactions: compwiz1202
“Disney doesn’t really offer anything useful that Apple can use to augment their existing Apple devices. “

Do you realize how much content and copyrights Disney owns? Plus, studios, production base, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: decypher44 and Huck
Does it include the Hotstar subscribers in India? because Disney+ is launched and merged with Hotstar following their
acquisition of 21st Century Fox. and whoever has a Hotstar VIP/Premium Subscription gets a Disney + subscription now with the launch of the service last week. and Hotstar being very popular here in India, i would guess there should be alot more to add to the subscribers count.
 
Once they start loading disney channel content in there it'll be a must-have for families with kids under 15. They have a lot of stuff, but not everything.

Pretty easy to see which MR commenters have little kids and which ones don't in this thread.

Hot Take: We have a 12 year old, even when she was 11 (when D+ started), she had zero interest, she hasn't been into anything "directly" Disney related since she was like 6 or 7 :D (and only has passing interest in Marvel, and a few select Pixar films, that I have usually purchased anyway, so need for a channel for the same content ...)

Did a free stint, Mandalorian was fine, but there's so much compelling content on other services (not including Apple ...), that has way more appeal to me and my wife.
 
We do use Disney+ and enjoy it (we have teenagers who love Star Wars) but so far we have not found anything in Apple TV+ quite as compelling.
 
Like Spotify and Netflix, Disney has no hardware. That means that Apple can take their time to starve Disney our. Unlike Netflix and Spotify, Disney does have alternative revenue streams so it will take a while but Apple will surpass Disney in paid subscribers in 2-3 years.

Just want to mention that Apple is only one platform in the wide breadth of platforms. You are forgetting about at the minimum Android, set top boxes, game consoles, web browsers, and Roku. If Disney wanted, they could simply not be on Apple and still have the success they have today.

Apple is not an insignificant platform to be available on, but people tend to overrate it due to brand recognition in North America

My thought on Apple+ is it lacks branding finesse and direction. It’s all very clumsy. Most people still don’t realize that AppleTV+ is a SVOD service
[automerge]1586439092[/automerge]
Where is the content on Disney+? In the UK half the MCU is missing and where is all the Fox stuff? Where’s the Lucasfilm stuff (outside of Star Wars)? I might be banning myself soon.

Licensing
[automerge]1586439182[/automerge]
Apple can buy Disney right now with their cash on hand. Would solve their content problem.

Does Apple know how to run the parks & resort side of the business?
 
It's like comparing Nice Fresh Sweet Apples and dirty stinking rotten apples that drop the F bomb ever 30 seconds.
I was sorely disappointed with Apple's content being so R rated. It's odd how the "best story tellers in the business" can't convey an emotion without some of the worst foul language on TV.

I'm out.
 
  • Love
Reactions: compwiz1202
I think Disney has also done a great job with customer goodwill by releasing Frozen 2 and Onward way ahead of schedule on D+ in the US with the current environment. Disney has always been great at brand management, and this has been another example. If you look all over social media, people (especially parents, though we don't have kids, and we thought Onward was great) have been extremely thankful at these early releases. Even for the Verizon free customers, when that one year comes up, this will still be in those people's minds.
 
  • Love
Reactions: compwiz1202
This is inaccurate, and I think you know that. 50M subscribers aren't watching "garbage" and aren't all 11 years old.

47 million people ate at McDonalds yesterday too.

Quality content to me is something like PBS or The Criterion Channel. I get free Netflix from my $40/month T-Mobile line. But I rarely find anything worth watching on there.
 
Last edited:
With all those subscribers and money they should fix the player crashing in browsers.
It crashes a number of times during a movie in Safari - pretty sad.
 
This really boggles my mind. If we assume that people are paying $4 a month, that means Disney currently has a guaranteed income of $200 million each month, meaning $2.4 billion per year! Holy guacamole!
 
I signed up during one of the pre-launch promos and I have to say D+ is great! TONS of new and classic content to choose from. Between cable TV, Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ and of course YouTube my family has had no problem finding fresh content to watch separately and together during this pandemic. Now after the pandemic we've decided we're going on a digital detox because we're just looking at screens far to much right now (for obvious reasons). Can't wait to get past this and hang out with loved ones in-person and in public again.
 
Apple can buy Disney right now with their cash on hand. Would solve their content problem.
Can they? I just checked their balance sheet out of curiosity. It shows 107.16B cash and 116.75B total debt. I am not an accountant but it looks like they have no cash to speak of.
 
  • Like
Reactions: M3gatron
I'll be really curious to know later this year how many subscribers Apple TV+ has once all of the free year subscriptions run out.

My wife has a subscription to Disney+ (mainly for our son and niece/nephew), but I think I have used Disney+ more than I have ATV+ (though Netflix/Hulu/HBO Now apps are used the most in our house). I highly doubt I will continue my ATV+ subscription once my free year is up on 11/1.
 
I don't know if this is a fair comparison. Netflix was the real first streaming service and streaming online and through TVs is a standard now. So, adding another service (with a huge library) is easier for the consumer to sign up without much risk.
The subscriber numbers are just the facts. I mentioned that it’s not Apples to apples, but 50M subscribers in less than 6 months is insane.
 
This was a lay down. You could predict that anything Disney would be popular.
I've had it since last year and I still am surprised when I find a classic I watched as a kid or teen.
Yes there is a ton of stuff I remember just in the Through the Decades section.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JosephAW
47 million people at at McDonalds yesterday too.

Quality content to me is something like PBS or The Criterion Channel. I get free Netflix from my $40/month T-Mobile line. But I rarely find anything worth watching on there.
You’re in the minority, which is fine, but mass appeal doesn’t mean garbage.

Most people don’t think McDonald’s is the best food ever, but it still serves a purpose And does it well.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.