I have said before that I don’t take the term streaming war seriously. Why because it equates companies that don’t have it together with established behemoths in the streaming world. Going in to the summer the talk was about the three big streaming services that are set to take on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Well here is how the first two have stacked up so far. Over a four week period HBO Max accounted for 6% of app use amongst the major streaming services. Netflix accounted for 30%, Amazon accounted for 20% Hulu accounted for 12% and Disney+ accounted for 8%. Of course Hulu and Disney+ are the same company so we could actually say that Disney gobbled up 20% of the time combined meaning that 70% of the time spent on streaming services was concentrated among three companies.
What will be more interesting to see is what HBO Max’s numbers look like heading in to the fall when it is not the newest app and the curiosity factor has dried up. It could be that it grows with new shows launching and say a deal to move on to Roku and Fire TV, whose absence as distribution partners has most likely caused the numbers to be lower than they would otherwise be.
The numbers for HBO Max though look like an explosive success compared to Quibi, which accounted for .05 percent of streaming activity this past month. So that’s the state of “The Streaming Wars”
