It’s understandable if a distinct sense of déjà vu hit you upon reading the Bloomberg report earlier this month suggesting new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro was keen on evolving Disney+ into a so-called “super app” capable of selling a broad array of products, from theme park tickets to merchandise.
All that might sound familiar because the exact same vision emerged under a previous Disney CEO, Bob Chapek, back in 2022. Surely a Disney veteran like D’Amaro was well aware of that, but it didn’t stop him from touting the idea all over again.
The super app is not a concept exclusive to Disney, of course. It’s practically the market standard in China, which is dominated by super apps, such as WeChat, that offer consumers a wide range of services under one hood.
No wonder Elon Musk has been vowing to take his X business in the same direction from the moment he bought Twitter right up until last month, when he declared he’s close to integrating banking capabilities with the app.
It’s not hard to see why moguls of various stripes are besotted with the super app concept. It’s a synergy-on-steroids fantasy weaving together the many strands of a company’s business so that its brand becomes a one-stop shop conceivably vast enough to limit the time consumers need to spend anywhere else.
Nevertheless, making this fantasy a reality is obviously horribly complicated, using rich user data in a way that is perhaps too invasive to ever take hold in Western markets.
A souped-up Disney+ could have conceivably been the home of the AI-powered features Disney and OpenAI were working to bring to market before their partnership unraveled in March. Luminate survey data noted there wasn’t strong consumer interest in that functionality to begin with.
But there’s another reason the super app concept feels far-fetched for Disney — or really any rival streaming service. The sad truth is that the market entrants in this category have yet to demonstrate any kind of versatility that would suggest consumers are willing to do anything with them beyond watch films and TV shows.
Take Netflix, the market leader. The company has tried valiantly to diversify beyond long-form content into everything from mobile gaming to interactive content and has had mixed results at best.
More damning is the fact that no streaming service has managed to make short-form content a meaningful part of its offering even though mastering that could be a game changer. What’s worse is these streaming services aren’t all that successful at being one-trick ponies.
Think about how poor the UX is on even the best of the streamers, where users drown in an endless sea of tiles representing their programming choices. You could be bingeing your way through one TV show, and somehow many streamers don’t have enough sense to serve up an access point to that show at the very top of the screen upon your return.
If Disney+ and its ilk can barely execute their core competency with actual competence, why would any consumer trust they could branch out to execute something that isn’t smack in the middle of their wheelhouse?
All of this doesn’t mean a super app is either a bad idea in theory or something that will never happen in the U.S. But given the track record of streaming services, it would probably take decades, not years, to fully realize — something investors need to understand lest they be deluded this kind of innovation is right around the corner.
