Netflix's StreamFest Grew Global App Installs By 200% Week-Over-Week

Netflix hosted StreamFest this past weekend, a free trial of its platform in India that led to a surge of first-time adoption of its mobile app there. Between December 5 and 6, the Netflix mobile app reached approximately 3.6 million installs globally, up 200 percent from the previous weekend, preliminary Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates show.

Netflix's StreamFest Experiment

Netflix's installs in November remained relatively flat from October across both app stores worldwide. Thanks to StreamFest, December is off to a supercharged start for the video-streaming service on mobile.

First-time installs lept 190 percent from approximately 551,000 on December 1 to about 1.6 million installs on December 2 thanks to an uptick of downloads from users in India. In the first six days of December, the app has seen nearly 9 million installs globally, more than half of the 16.7 million first-time worldwide installs it saw in November.

While the StreamFest event boosted Netflix's installs in India, it remains to be seen if its marketing efforts will lead to a knock-on effect of continued interest from that market. To date, the app has seen a little more than 59 million installs in India, and it's clear that Netflix is hoping to capture more of this audience as adoption of the app by first-time users is slowing in other key markets.

Disney+ Celebrates Its Anniversary with a New Record

Netflix isn't the only streaming service broadening its reach in search of a wider audience. Disney+ celebrated its one-year anniversary in November by rolling out in a handful of new markets.

On November 17, Disney's subscription video-on-demand service became available in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and other Latin American markets. This resulted in nearly 25 million installs globally in November, about five times its nearly 5 million installs in October. Thanks to this surge of new users, November became the app's best month ever for downloads, surpassing the 23 million installs it saw during its launch month of November 2019.

Continued Competition

With Discovery+ launching on January 4 and an international rollout for Paramount+ planned for 2021, the streaming video space will continue to become even more crowded with various bespoke offerings. Contenders in the space will now have to compete not only with Netflix and Disney+, but also Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and HBO Max. As new services compete for their share of the overall audience, they will likely continue testing strategies such as StreamFest to capture consumer attention in key markets.