Buy a media company? I've been saying for a long time that Apple should buy McLaren to ramp their car portfolio quickly. Last time I checked it the market cap for McLaren was about $2B. Tim Cook tips bigger than $2B for lunch. Hey, McLaren's HQ in UK looks a lot like the new Apple spaceship campus, guess which one came first? I'd settle for Apple buying Dyson, which says it's going to sell EV cars in 2021, with the cars being built in Singapore. I think Dyson is also worth $2B in change. Curiously, most of Dyson's products could also be HomeKit-enabled and sold in Apple Stores (robot vacuum cleaners, fans, humidifiers, lights, etc.) So that's a perfect fit.
Honestly, for all of the praise heaped on Dyson, I find their products under-developed, under-tested and overpriced.
I'm not against Apple producing original content, but I don't think it's going to turn into a major revenue stream for them. I worry the quest for content is a fool's errand. For years I've said they should buy Nintendo and I still think that would be the best acquisition they could make. The lion's share of App Store revenue is video games and IAP associated with video games. Nintendo is profitable, has numerous well-established and beloved global franchises, and does good work when it comes to hardware and game controllers. I hope the original content play works out for Apple, but I think getting serious about gaming would be a much smarter move.
The thing with original content, all it takes is a few hit shows. Look at Netflix. There is a ton of crap they produce but they do have hit shows. As far as Nintendo goes, I completely agree. With their huge catalog of titles, imagine what that would do for the neglected (with gaming) Apple TV. The gaming market is booming worldwide. That would be a smart move by Apple to invest in that $140 billion/yearly and growing piece of the pie.
My concern with content is that Apple is late to the game. They should never have let Netflix become Netflix. I'm a big Apple fan and longtime customer (35 years!), but it will take a lot to convince me that I need another streaming service. Netflix has become a juggernaut. Yes, Apple has "disrupted" other markets successfully in the past, but there's no guarantee they can do it again. It seems expensive and risky whereas Nintendo is basically a guaranteed win. Nintendo has some of the most well recognized gaming franchises in the world. They have a huge built-in fan base who buys every new console they release. They are the king of mobile gaming (and I don't mean smartphone games). It seems like such a no-brainer to me. Slogging it out in the fickle original content space - trying to build a back catalog of hits, trying to convince the public they need another service - seems highly risky and, frankly, more like a vanity project than anything else. Gaming prints money. Why Apple continues to treat it in a very half-assed way makes no sense to me (and never has).
You don't think they have smart people being paid a lot of money to weigh all of these sorts of things and make well-informed decisions?
The smart people would have picked up Netflix or got into the market earlier.
As robbyx said, Apple is late to the game and as a result the risks are higher.
He made a good case with facts. The streaming space is now getting crowded.
When markets get fragmented, they tend to converge. Having no huge back catalogue for filling also creates problems as you can almost smell the filling in original content as some series unnecessarily extend episode and season length. Then you have the opposite extreme with ultra short episodes.
The need for content also has an impact on quality as formulas get repeated over and over, series get cancelled before they are allowed to fully develop and budgets are lowered.
From a business perspective, nothing is new (film production has suffered from the same problems for decades) but the model will probably change before before convergence happens.
As mentioned above, Netflix is now bundled with some plans of a major Spanish carrier, not unlike Amazon bundles Prime Video with Its flat rate delivery option.
Apple has the money to see things out for the long run as long as the long term commitment is there. Content, especially quality content also has good re-sale value.
The reality though is getting people subscribe to your service and not competing options. That could prove difficult so I expect Apple to bundle its streaming service for a time.
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As robbyx said, Apple is late to the game and as a result the risks are higher.
He made a good case with facts. The streaming space is now getting crowded.
When markets get fragmented, they tend to converge. Having no huge back catalogue for filling also creates problems as you can almost smell the filling in original content as some series unnecessarily extend episode and season length. Then you have the opposite extreme with ultra short episodes.
The need for content also has an impact on quality as formulas get repeated over and over, series get cancelled before they are allowed to fully develop and budgets are lowered.
From a business perspective, nothing is new (film production has suffered from the same problems for decades) but the model will probably change before before convergence happens.
As mentioned above, Netflix is now bundled with some plans of a major Spanish carrier, not unlike Amazon bundles Prime Video with Its flat rate delivery option.
Apple has the money to see things out for the long run as long as the long term commitment is there. Content, especially quality content also has good re-sale value.
The reality though is getting people subscribe to your service and not competing options. That could prove difficult so I expect Apple to bundle its streaming service for a time.