On November 12 this year, Disney launches a new streaming service called Disney +. A trial version of the streaming platform was launched in the Netherlands on 12 September 2019, followed by the official release in the United States and Canada on 12 November. In this way, possible technical problems that could arise can be solved before Disney + officially appears on the American market. But will the new streaming platform be a worthy competitor for Netflix?
The company announced that Disney + will cost $ 7 a month (Cohen, 2019). That is a lot less than the $ 13 Netflix asks for their most popular subscription in the US. Yet, based on functionality Disney + does not yet equal Netflix. For example, the streaming giant has films and series available in multiple languages and focusses on a bigger target group. Consequently, since Disney + is mainly focusing on families, Netflix will have more relevant offerings for adults.
Although Disney+ does not have such a wide catalog as Netflix, it tries to compensate for other features. For example, every account can create up to seven user-profiles whereas with Netflix this limit is six profiles. Additionally, Disney + will stream in 4K HDR and uses Dolby Atmos to support the newest sound format (Cohen, 2019).
Interestingly, in addition to the Disney classics, purchased content and own productions, the films from Marvel will also come to Disney + (Geels, 2019). A large part of these films can now be seen via Netflix. However, this will change in the course of the year and it will be very interesting to see how Netflix will fill up this loss.
With a lower price than Netflix and a high image quality, Disney hopes to be able to quickly seduce many consumers. The company wants to have between 60 and 90 million worldwide subscribers by 2024. For comparison: Netflix now has 140 million (Geels, 2019). However, with a very large and popular catalog, Disney + has the potential to become a serious competitor for Netflix. What do you think about the future course of these two streaming platforms?
References:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/how-much-does-disney-plus-cost/
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/08/19/videodienst-disney-in-november-in-nederland-a3970512
Interesting article. You mention correctly that Disney+ does not have such a wide catalogue of content as Netflix yet. However, Disney has enormous content potential in terms of volume as well as quality. Besides content with the classic Disney brands, the company owns content from Mavel and Pixar besides a variety of TV content from their network channels such as ABC and ESPN. And indeed, it will be interesting to see how Netflix will fill up the gap when Disney takes such content away from the Netflix platform. This will be very interesting competition among the two.
Hi Moises, very interesting to write about such a move in a already consolidated streaming market. In my opinion, Disney+ indeed poses a real threat not only to Netflix but also to other streaming providers such as Amazon Prime and Sky. As Disney/Fox lost the tender for Sky against Comcast, the American telecommunications firm now owns the British Pay-TV firm Sky. In addition with its Universal productions, Comcast tries to keep up with the competition. However, I agree with you that it will be very difficult for established firms as families will probably want to watch the “Disney classics” and maybe not cancel Netflix, but get a Disney+ subscription in addition to it.