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Disney Plus had 3.2M mobile app downloads in first 24 hours

People spent 1.3 million hours watching Disney Plus, according to Apptopia.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
Expertise Streaming video, film, television and music; virtual, augmented and mixed reality; deep fakes and synthetic media; content moderation and misinformation online Credentials
  • Three Folio Eddie award wins: 2018 science & technology writing (Cartoon bunnies are hacking your brain), 2021 analysis (Deepfakes' election threat isn't what you'd think) and 2022 culture article (Apple's CODA Takes You Into an Inner World of Sign)
Joan E. Solsman
Marge and Homer Simpson

The full catalog of The Simpson was among the properties new Disney Plus subscribers could stream. 

Fox

Disney Plus, the highly anticipated streaming service from Disney that launched early Tuesday, was downloaded 3.2 million times to mobile devices and sucked in new members for 1.3 million hours of viewing in the first 24 hours, app analytics company Apptopia said Wednesday. 

It's also No. 1 app in the Apple iOS app store in both the US and Canada. In the Netherlands, the third country where Disney Plus launched Tuesday, it's No.2 -- but Disney Plus had been available in the Netherlands for weeks already as part of a free beta test. 

The Disney Plus launch also boosted ESPN Plus and Hulu, Disney's other streaming services that are part of a $13-a-month bundle with Disney Plus. Hulu's iOS app store ranking jumped to its highest level in more than six months, hitting No. 15. ESPN Plus' ranking surged to No. 23 from 163, according to Apptopia. 

Disney Plus is perhaps the most high-profile example of traditional Hollywood reorienting to compete against the likes of Netflix in streaming video. It's Disney's $7-a-month streaming subscription service for almost everything the entertainment giant creates, and Disney has realigned the entire company around it, including forsaking the hundreds of millions of dollars Netflix itself was paying Disney to stream the company's blockbuster movies.

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