Disney+ mobile app records 22 million downloads since launch: Apptopia

(Reuters) - Walt Disney Co's Disney+ has been downloaded 22 million times on mobile devices since the launch of the streaming service in November, according to a report by research firm Apptopia.

Disney had earlier said its new service had witnessed "extraordinary consumer demand" on the day of the launch, reaching 10 million sign-ups.

The company now serves about 41.5 million viewers in the United States, including subscribers for its other streaming businesses, Hulu and ESPN+, compared with about 61 million for industry leader Netflix Inc.

Apptopia said Disney+ competitors, including Netflix and Amazon.com Inc's Prime Video, remain largely unaffected in terms of their performance during the same period.

While users in the United States spent about 200 million hours on the Disney+ app during the first four weeks of its launch, Netflix users have spent about 1 billion hours during the same period, according to Apptopia.

Disney+, which is presently live in U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands, averaged 9.5 million daily active users in the past week, Apptopia said.

Separately, Disney+ topped as Google's most searched word this year in the United States.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)