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HBO Max hits 87K mobile downloads on day one, behind Disney+ and Quibi: Sensor Tower

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down the latest numbers for HBO Max as the platform officially enters a crowded streaming fight.

Video transcript

- As we highlighted earlier in the week, the latest streaming offering out there came onto the market in the form of HBO Max. So how is it doing out of the gate? That is the focus of this week's "Fame and Fortune." And I want to get to Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal, who has the details. Alex.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: That's right. HBO Max officially entered the streaming fight on Wednesday. And at $15 a month, it's one of the more expensive services out there, so analysts were really curious to see how they would do during that first day of its launch.

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And according to data from Sensor Tower, the app received around 90,000 mobile downloads on day one. If you compare that number to other streaming services, like Disney Plus and Quibi, it is significantly lower. Disney Plus received around 4 million downloads when it made its debut in November, whereas Quibi acquired around a 380,000.

I did reach out to Warner Media for comment on this, and they responded, saying these numbers are factually inaccurate. They didn't provide alternate figures, so we're still waiting on those official numbers from HBO Max themselves.

But it is important to keep in mind that these are strictly mobile downloads. It doesn't take into account other ways that people could have acquired the service, such as through cable subscriptions, those who had HBO Now, which was the company's previous platform, they automatically were upgraded to HBO Max, as well as those that participated in the company's 12-for-$12 promotion, leading up to the launch.

So no matter how you dispute these figures at the moment, one thing that you cannot argue is the impressive content library that HBO Max has amassed, over 10,000 hours of content, including access to sitcoms, like "Friends," "The Big Bang Theory," all eight "Harry Potter" films. And this is incredibly important during this time, because the coronavirus has led to a bit of a production dry-up. And that has impacted streamers, like Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus. Those services really struggling with that second wave of original content.

But HBO Max doesn't seem to have that problem. They announced a second wave of originals to hit this summer, which will include a Selena Gomez quarantine cooking show. I highlighted that a few weeks ago. And it just goes to show how important it is for these streamers to pivot during this time, to get creative. Because at the end of the day, content is absolutely king, and the more content you have, the more it's going to convince consumers to pay for your platform as opposed to the rest of the competition.

- Yeah, and it's going to have quite a few titles to justify the relatively higher $15 a month price point as well.