HBO Max hits 8.6 million accounts 4 months after launch

From CNET: HBO Max has hit 8.6 million accounts, HBO parent company AT&T said Thursday in its latest quarterly report.

By comparison, Disney Plus reported more than 10 million signups in little more than 24 hours after it launched in November. Disney Plus, which at $7 a month is less than half the cost of $15-a-month HBO Max, grew to 60.5 million subscribers by about eight months after its launch. HBO Max's goal is to reach 50 million subscribers in the US by 2025.

It's tricky to define exactly how many total paying subscribers HBO Max has. The company doesn't directly release that info. In July, AT&T had noted HBO Max had 4.1 million signups for its service in its first month; that indicates HBO Max drew in roughly the same number of new accounts in three months as it did in the very first. But these numbers could count people who signed up for limited-time free trials and then didn't stick around as actual subscribers.

HBO Max also is somewhat unique among streaming rivals, in that 28.7 million people have access to the service at no added cost: All they have to do is download the app and sign up. So far, AT&T's numbers on HBO Max suggest that a fraction of those people have actually done so. It seems to be a growing fraction, but a fraction nonetheless.

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