“Apple’s Apple TV 4K box may have only come out last Friday, but its one killer feature already seems to be having a monumental impact on the video streaming world,” John Archer writes for Forbes. “That killer feature is Apple’s decision to sell 4K film titles for the same price as HD ones – a move which has seen 4K titles go on sale on iTunes for as little as $9.99, or even just £3.99 in the UK. And the first signs of its knock-on impact have just shown up on the video streaming service of arch rival, Amazon.”
“Prior to the Apple TV 4K’s launch, buying movies from Amazon Prime Video in 4K generally set you back a healthy premium over their lower resolution versions. Today, though, the Amazon Prime Video platform has 4K versions of films listed for essentially the same prices as their HD versions,” Archer writes. “This sees the most expensive titles coming in at around $19.99, while one or two titles are as cheap to buy as $5.”
“Apple arguably still holds an advantage over Amazon in the value stakes, since its iTunes titles are generally accompanied by brightness- and color-boosting high dynamic range technology, while Amazon’s titles are, for now anyway, UHD only,” Archer writes. “Apple also has a bigger catalogue of purchasable 4K movies than Amazon does, though, and this may prove a tougher hurdle for Amazon to overcome.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We welcome the 4K price war with open arms and a warm embrace!
Bernie Sanders just wouldn’t approve of this free market competition nor do I. The Department Of Streaming should come in immediately and regulate and subsidize this egregious violation of Marxist tenets.
I, for one, am taking a knee for Karl & The Bern… and any of you who don’t join me are racist nazi white supremacist islamaphobes who deserve a bicycle lock up the side of the head.
peace.
and remember:
“it’s for the children.”
Making shit up is your speciality.
Paul, c’mon man, it’s for the children.
MAMA
Make America Marxist Again.
I’d say MAM!
Sure, botty…peace. You say one thing, but instigate the opposite with your snide comments and your twisting of reality in an attempt to ridicule others and marginalize their opinions.
Since when is it a crime to kneel in this country? The day that the POTUS began denigrating respectful, and peaceful protest against social injustice as worthy of being fired is the day that this country has reached a new low.
Peace.
it was a joke, Melvin.
there’s really not a Department Of Streaming…yet.
Here’s to hoping that with the rollout of the new Mac OS today and it’s support for H.265, we might see the ability to actually purchase and DOWNLOAD 4k movies as opposed to just streaming them. That would certainly be a welcomed development and would go a long way towards explaining why downloads were not available on launch.
Thank you Apple for doing the heavy lifting on this.
Don’t forget “for allowing the sun to come up this morning”.
Tim Cook needs a wake up call.
Rolling my eyes.
Internal competition is good, now on to App Stores…
Stalking….Stalking? Please give the word “competition”
a break, it’s called responding to market pressure.
Another reason why Amazon is valued by Wall Street much higher than Apple will ever be. Jeff Bezos will do anything to beat out rivals even if he might lose a few dollars here and there. Amazon will most likely get far more streaming subscribers than Apple. Apple refuses to get into any race-to-the-bottom price wars but Jeff Bezos doesn’t care as long as his company dominates all others. I’m not criticizing Apple because they run their company differently than Amazon and that’s their choice. I just know Bezos plays to win and big investors love that strategy.
I’m not downing Apple’s strategy on ‘focus on products’ but I wonder why AFTER they’ve made the products they don’t spend a bit more effort on marketing or PR (as I’ve talked about in depth elsewhere).
They should take a page out of Bezos and talk (or ‘spin’ as people might call it) more about Apple and it’s products. Bezos endlessly ‘sells’ amazon.
(one clear example Macs Apple second largest hardware money maker has practically zero marketing)
Take Apple TV, after the launch SVPs should be pushing hard in a PR campaign explaining why Apple TV is superior and worth the higher price. (99% of consumers don’t watch launch presentations). There has been pretty negative press about Apple TV (‘too late, too expensive, missing options’) in the GENERAL press and Apple PR is not combating it effectively (in my opinion). After launch practically silence from Apple on the merits of Apple TV. They should be explaining and pushing and pushing…
Unlike ‘marketing maven’ Steve Jobs, everybody at Apple today (even Schiller marketing SVP is a scientist by training) seem to think selling, PR is a ‘chore’ and they seem to want to run back to their labs as fast as possible. Flamers have said my posts are ‘hyperbole’ but Like I’ve pointed out before if people think marketing like in social media like Tweets are silly , go ask some EX presidential candidates…
Amazon keeps losing money and Apple keeps making money. Amazon survives on the stock market, Apple owns the stock market.
Nuff said…
Organizations that ‘lose’ money consistently year after year don’t constantly keep growing larger (unless you’re government). Amazon constantly spends money on itself resulting in thin profits. Apple works in a different way and results in sitting on large amounts of money that gets ‘locked’ away in one way or another.
and a good way to help lock some of it away would be in my – and other peoples – retirement accounts.
so, mr. apple, how about rewarding us long term investors, who have stuck with you through thick and thin, by giving us a nice fat increase in our dividend rates, rather than, say, large scale stock buy backs
you gots the money, we would like a larger slice of it ourselves. heck it might even make it easier for us to afford some of your more higher priced products, like the iphone X and the forthcoming imac pro.
think of it as a sort of virtuous cycle. everybody wins.
Doctor, if you need money from your AAPL and you desire a larger regular dividend, then you may want to sell some AAPL and invest in some other areas. REITs, for instance, may provide the regular income stream you are apparently seeking.
Most of Apple’s cash and securities is located overseas. It would cost quite a bit in taxes to repatriate those resources in order to fund a larger dividend. And that would likely take the form of a special dividend, anyway, not an increase to the regular dividend, which should be funded from profits obtained from ongoing business. A company should not set itself up to fund regular dividends by dipping into its savings – that would be bad policy.
what you suggest they should not do, they are already doing. they are already leveraging that overseas money by borrowing against it at low interest rates to help pay for our dividends and buy backs, in anticipation of a super low tax rate if and when the money is repatriated.
so again, less emphasis on buy backs and more in dividends. no real change in policy other than a shift in emphasis.
“Apple also has a bigger catalogue of purchasable 4K movies than Amazon does, though, and this may prove a tougher hurdle for Amazon to overcome.” – News to me, thought we could only ‘Rent’ them. It’s because we can only ‘Rent’ them that I will not buy the new ATV, I live in the back of beyond and my Satelite feed is a paltry 16MB. Wish I could ‘Purchase’ a 4K movie. I’m so disappointed.
Uh oh… Now the DOJ will be going after Apple for their unfair abuse of their monopoly and price setting.
In collusion with the entertainment media conglomerates… like they did with the book publishers.