Editorial: Apple faces entirely new challenges with Apple TV+

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 32
    spice-boyspice-boy Posts: 1,450member
    hardware and services

    will this sell more hardware? nope.

    will this increase profit from services? err, lets do some napkin numbers

    $6billion sunk, for at best 2 months content, 2 months of service sells for $10.

    will the service EVER have 600,000,000 subscribers?

    netflix only has 150million subs and that is accessible on every device, operating system and many televisions. Apple has 1billion potential delivery points, which is at best 1/3 to 1/4 of the potential points netflix does.. so even at the same uptake rate Apple will be lucky to even reach 50million subs.

    something does not add up, not this year and probably not ever. none of the sunk costs in the current content will reduce the cost of future content.

    sure, semi random figures, true sunk amount unknown etc. but come on, a very generous 50 million subs only turns over $500million every two months. $6billion a year. not a quarter, not every 2 months... and you get it free for a year with every new hardware... so like, no income at all because this will sell exactly NO new hardware to anyone.

    apple will claim ridiculous subs because free, it will claim to be the biggest streaming service on earth in the first 12 months, because free with hardware sales

    and make no money. patience and deep pockets don’t matter at that point.

    what is the point?

    a hedge against being broken up into different companies? to make sure Apple Services has a full complement when the government splits them - that is the only reason i can see.
    I think Tim wants to go to the Oscars in the future that's why some of these movies are being released in theaters to qualify for awards. 
    15ngcs1mobird
  • Reply 22 of 32
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    arlor said:
    Notsofast said:
    Fair points, but underlying the entire editorial is the dubious proposition that Apple wants to be like Netflix, etc.  It seems increasingly clear that Apple has no desire to have a large back catalogue of stuff that most people don't care to watch. Instead, they seem to intend to be more of a HBO, indeed as HBO transitions under its new owner to having more and more content, Apple may be the only high quality focused service out there.    
    This may be a good analysis, but even before HBO's strategy shift, they had a heck of a lot more content than Apple will have anytime soon. HBO's been making original content for far longer than they've had a streaming service, so they had a substantial back catalog right from the beginning. 

    That's it, exactly.  HBO had a pretty deep catalog of series, specials, documentaries, etc.  They also have a large movie catalog of third party titles.  Apple will have maybe two dozen titles at launch.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 32
    As an upstart, Apple should do things differently from all the other streaming services blowing up in the USA!!
    With a BILLION devices, Apple should go the Global Route,
    By this I mean Latin America alone has a population of 500 million People, 
    now, if Apple could invest in NEW POPULAR programming that’s taylored to that region at that price point $4.99. Apple TV+ will gain a cult following.
    This can be applied to very high economic growth regions like the Middle East, The Sub-Continent, Southeast Asia etc.
    Personally what I think Apple should avoid heavily investing in very Expensive USA based programming that all the other USA streaming services and Network Broadcasters are doing. 
    Only produce the very based USA and because Apple is a global company make investment in the rest of the world,
    The US TV market will eventually weed out all the pretenders.

    15ngcs1watto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 32
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    Pro tip: your local library has a lot of content available for free. Some of it even streams. For free. Free is a good price. 

    I hope AppleTV+ is successful. Options are always good. I am unlikely to partake - simply because I haven't seen anything I want to watch, but that might change. The same is generally true of all the other steaming services. I would like access to a pay per view live sports stream. 99c for the game tonight? Sure. I might go as high as $1.99 if I was feeling flush and the teams weren't both 0-3. 
    philboogie
  • Reply 25 of 32
    davgregdavgreg Posts: 1,036member
    Hollywood will be happy to take Apple’s money, but they will likely not make much of an impact. Apple has the financial resources, but went in on the cheap.

    What they have accomplished is to make it more difficult to buy a studio or network and avoid problems under regulatory review. Warner after the split from cable would have been a great buy- lots of marketable brands, a worldwide news channel (CNN), a massive film library (Warner owns a lot of the classic movie era output of other studios), a film studio, the production capacity to do sports (TBS) and a collection of cable and OTA outlets. Then they also own HBO.

    All that belongs to AT&T now. Comcast owns NBC and Universal. Disney owns ABC and ESPN. That leaves to soon to be merged Viacom-CBS. They own the CBS Network half of the CW Network, Showtime, MTV, VH1, BET, CBSN (24 Hour streaming news channel, CBS Sports (gives you sports production staff and a cable outlet), the Paramount studio, a huge library of TV shows, an Australian TV network, production studios in most of the top US markets (local TV stations) and a book publisher (Simon & Schuster)...
  • Reply 26 of 32
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    xixo said:
    Hollywood is noted for extracting cash from outsiders.
    if you mean investors, how is this any different than tech? Startups burn and burn cash. It’s called a “burn rate” not surprisingly. Most companies fail. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 27 of 32
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member

    Apple spent $80 billion on stock buybacks last year, so I'm not sure why anyone would worry about the cost/budgeting for Apple TV+ in the near future.
    No one is worrying about Apple coming up with the cash to blow.

    What people worry about is more nuanced than that. It is worrisome to see Apple spending a lot of money to produce junk content that no one asked for, and then turning around and pretending that it is a huge success because they're counting every hardware purchase as a $60 year of TV. Despite the fact that no one has paid for it directly, and no one has willingly subscribed to it. After the first year when none of those people continue using it, they can hide all the dropoff by only reporting "new" subs, which will be in the tens of millions thanks to new hardware sales. This pollutes the entire industry with fraud. 

    What people actually want, we can't have, because Apple has failed under Eddy Cue to negotiate anything groundbreaking in the way of TV licensing:
    - No subscription to iTunes Movies or TV Shows...of any kind. Fail.
    - Apple TV Channels includes only small-time content providers and none of the top 3. Not even their own licensed catalog.

    Because of these abject failures, Apple changed course and dumped the cash into this new plan, that no one wants, no one asked, no one will subscribe to, but will still be heralded as a major success, paving the way for more such delusions.
    What drugs are you on? How can you possibly feel qualified to declare the content junk? We haven’t seen it. The trailers look inviting. 

    Who asked Amazon for video content?

    Apple TV Channels is only small time? So the HBO I’m currently subscribing to in Channels is small-time? Again, what drugs are you on?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 32
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member

    Modern TV shows suck. I wish Apple would get the rights to some older/classic shows. One of the reasons I subscribed to Netflix is it was the one place you could stream The West Wing and The Wonder Years. I’m sure others were there because of Friends or The Office. Amazon Prime had the show Thirtysomething but it’s currently unavailable. 
    Oh dear. I would suggest you have a very narrow perception of what constitutes good TV. IMO those shows suck, and we are indeed in the golden era of awesome TV. Too many awesome shows to list. Will not go back to the Dukes of Hazard broadcast television days. Friends is like McDonalds — mass market appeal, but not a good burger. It’s trite sitcom in the same vein as Three’s Company. Simply uninteresting to my household. We like high-quality drama, and there’s so much of it it’s crazy. 
    edited October 2019 watto_cobra
  • Reply 29 of 32
    Metriacanthosaurus said: It is worrisome to see Apple spending a lot of money to produce junk content that no one asked for, and then turning around and pretending that it is a huge success because they're counting every hardware purchase as a $60 year of TV. Despite the fact that no one has paid for it directly, and no one has willingly subscribed to it. After the first year when none of those people continue using it, they can hide all the dropoff by only reporting "new" subs, which will be in the tens of millions thanks to new hardware sales. This pollutes the entire industry with fraud. 
    Do you consider Amazon including Prime Video for free to Amazon Prime subscribers fraudulent? It's not like this is a new idea...to tie a free service to a hardware sale or to signing up with a particular cellular provider. Apple TV+ is a value-added proposition for their current or future customers. 

    Amazon has a reason, it gives people a value add while they buy more socks and whatever.

    Apple will sell precisely zero extra devices, there is no value to Apple or their customer.

    The only lure is maybe as another commenter has proposed - that when Apple bullshits that they have a billion subscribers and are 6 times bigger than Netflix - the studios who have refused to come on board when apple was trying to make a cool idea (before this dumb one) will be interested.
  • Reply 30 of 32
    It's a loss leader.
  • Reply 31 of 32
    bbhbbh Posts: 134member
    "Apple will sell precisely zero extra devices, there is no value to Apple or their customer."

    Wrong, Sir. I am buying an ATV4K just because of the free year.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 32 of 32
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member

    Netflix, Amazon and Disney may have exceptional brand loyalty, but none of them make a device that a large percentage of Americans carry around in their pockets.
    How is that relevant? Out of 100, 15 people have an iPhone. They watch shows on it. From Netflix, Amazon and soon Disney. Content doesn't need to come from HW vendors. And the percentage of Americans is completely irrelevant, as Apple wants to launch Apple TV+ globally.

    Besides, the content on Nov 1st will be small. Incredibly small:
    1 movie (playing time: 9 min) (<that's nine minutes)
    8 series, some 1 season, some two some 30 minutes, some TBA.

    wikipedia dot org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Apple_TV%2B

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