HBO Now launched in April as a stands-alone streaming service and a competitor to Netflix. HBO is not talking numbers but one analyst estimates that HBO Now has close to 1 million subscribers.
1 million subscribers after 2 months
BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield arrived at the number by comparing data from analytics company App Annie. He estimates that over 1 million Americans signed up to the free trial (1 month) and that at least 850,000 are now paying for the service.
Greenfield notes these numbers only include Apple users and that the real number could be closer to a million if other parameters are accounted for. HBO Now is also available through Cablevision. Additionally, App Annie’s statistics do not include sign-ups through Apple TV, which could be a significant number.
HBO has confirmed that it will expand to Android soon, and we can probably expect it on Roku, FireTV, Tizen, webOS and all the other TV platforms shortly.
1 million is not a lot when compared to Netflix’s 40 million subscribers just in the US but HBO is just getting started, it seems. Let us see where we stand a few years from now and if HBO can truly compete with Netflix’s dominance in streaming.
- Source: BTIG via Quartz
