While streaming competitors introduced ad-supported plans to attract customers, Disney has stated that it has no plans to offer a cheaper, ad-supported plan for Disney+ despite the price hike to $8/month earlier this year, according to CEO Bob Chapek. Nevertheless, the price hike had little effect on its subscriber numbers.
In fact, the service gained 103.6 million subscribers in just 17 months from November 2019 to April 2021. This far exceeds the expected number of subscribers by 2024.
“We’re always reevaluating how we go to market across the world, but we’ve got no such plans now to do that. We’re happy with the models that we’ve got right now. We won’t limit ourselves and say no to anything. But right now, we have no such plans for that. We did launch at a very attractive price-value opening point. The first price increase that you mentioned in the first 16 months happened recently, and we’ve seen no significantly higher churn because of that.” – bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO
On Apple’s side, Apple offers an ad-free streaming service, Apple TV+. It was initially offered as a free one-year trial with a purchase of a Mac/iPhone/iPad/Apple TV. As its library continues to grow with new movies and series, Apple announced that starting next month, it will shorten its trial length to three months.
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