“Apple Inc. is planning to unveil video and news subscription offerings next month, the first major new digital services from the company since 2015,” Anousha Sakoui and Mark Gurman report for Bloomberg. “The Cupertino, California-based technology giant is planning a March 25 event to announce both services, according to people familiar with the plan. The iPhone maker invited Hollywood stars, including Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner and director JJ Abrams, to attend, one of the people said.”
“The video service is similar to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video and Netflix Inc. products, and will include TV shows and movies either acquired or funded by Apple,” Sakoui and Gurman report. “The paid service will launch by the summer, the people said.”
“The company’s premium news service will be integrated into the Apple News app, letting consumers subscribe to a bundle of titles for a monthly fee,” Sakoui and Gurman report. “BuzzFeed earlier reported that the News subscription service would launch on March 25.”
“Apple has been working on its streaming video service for a number of years,” Sakoui and Gurman report. “The content is likely to be integrated into Apple’s TV app on iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs, which launched in 2016.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not too long to wait now (“April” or “by the summer”) – and much better than having to wait until fall which we’ve long feared would be the case!
SEE ALSO:
Apple is targeting April to launch its new video service – February 13, 2019
Apple to hold special media event on March 25th – February 12, 2019
Publishers chafe at Apple’s terms for subscription news service – February 12, 2019
Oprah Winfrey hires Terry Wood from Netflix to head up Apple’s original content production – February 7, 2019
Apple patent application for Apple TV interface reveals aspects of live TV streaming service – February 5, 2019
Morgan Stanley: Apple can return to $1 trillion market value this year with new media bundling, video streaming services – February 4, 2019
Apple’s deep bench of original programming continues to grow – January 18, 2019
Apple to relaunch Texture magazine subscription service as soon as spring 2019 – December 12, 2018
Apple to shut down Texture’s Windows app in July – May 4, 2018
Apple is rumored to be eying Condé Nast acquisition – May 1, 2018
Amazon considered buying Texture before Apple bit – March 13, 2018
Apple pushes deeper into news – March 13, 2018
Apple to acquire Next Issue Media and its digital magazine-subscription service Texture – March 12, 2018
I just hope Cook knows that a streaming service needs new content added constantly, this is not iOS or Mac, you cannot update the content once a year and expect it to succeed
@AAPL
Spot on. I think the last thing consumers need is another sub plan. Apple is also way too late to this game and like ya said, Cook’s record for being timely is dismal.
It all depends on the quality of the content.
Late isn’t the problem, the lack of profit is…..
Dead on arrival…..
Ping!
Mobile Me
iTools
eWorld
Any chance it will have local live sports or news?
The stocks performance is a tell on the how the market trusts this team at Apple to really deliver a compelling streaming service. Apple is years late on this. I was always hoping that Apple would unlock the ITUNES library to streaming. I hope that this is the case and not a bunch of original Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon garbage. Apple Music is not as good as Spotify and they have been given a pass. But movies/original content is way more important. All live college sports and pro sports will be big but I doubt it under this team. I really hope that Apple gets a new CEO and bring some to energy into this company
There is no profit in it….
Yeah we heard it the first 2 or 3 times you parroted that line. Lateral thinking isn’t your strength is it, my worry is that it isn’t Cooks either mind.
Lateral thinking has nothing to do with it, those new marketing hires at Apple just can’t help themselves, like running into a iceberg…
Apple’s OS (mobile, watch, desktop), hardware, CPU design and engineering is where the profit is, not this lack of focus content field trips.
,,, and you know this team?
ESPN/ABC/Disney spend a fortune on sports and have little interest in sharing it with Apple. Fox spends a fair amount and ditto. CBS & NBC likewise.
I would not hold my breath waiting for Apple to get live ports unless they partner with another outlet.
Not interested. After having Sling and Hulu for over 5 years I’m done with paying for TV. I’ll stick with my HD antenna, internet with my Roku. I could watch Pluto TV for free.
The data on streaming services would suggestion that there are millions of people who don’t feel the way you do. I don’t even have an antenna. At my house, we only watch streaming services. There is a lot of room for individual preferences.
No profit, Apple is the latest country bumpkin in town…..
zero is that you
Way too little and way too late.
Should’ve bought Netflix or Hulu.
The Apple service will be so watered down and pretentious that it will be as embarrassing a debacle as Newton, which, ironically, was way too early….
… and actually pretty good by the time Jobs binned it. I suspect for many people being too early overlaps with being too late when they want to offer little but criticism. This service is late but the whole business is still in the storage and it will depend on the arguable competence of Cook as to whether it will be a success. Despite comments above there are some very strong players in the team responsible for this, its a matter what freedom against the Cook ‘conservatives’ they have to fulfil the potential.
A better choice would have been Time Warner. That would have given them HBO & Cinemax- both ad free premium platforms, Turner Classic Movies for that large but specialized audience, CNN- a worldwide brand for news, the Warner Studio and a massive library of motion pictures and TV. Also would have given them a 1/2 interest in the CW Network with CBS.
It belongs to AT&T now.
Pixar was it, that ship has sailed…..
I couldn’t be less excited by an Apple Event. Wake me when Apple has some real (even exciting) products to introduce.
Any suggestion as to what you might be looking for? The days when new unfulfilled holes in technoverse can simply be plugged are increasingly few and far between. But if you have some ideas then we can all criticise Cook and Co for not exploiting them as they failed to do with home speakers for example, but they were known and discussed in concept years before they launched.
I’m hoping for a YouTube style user generated content sight where, if Apple was smart, would NOT censor, and would monetize,, The alternative to YouTube, that is “trusted” in some sense.
It boggles the mind that iTunes had years of advantage becoming the biggest record label in the world, and never thought of being a place to watch music videos for the artists, let alone a platform for every other subject. But all of this is in it’s infancy, and you have to start somewhere. Live events would create the need. oh and as I’ve said before, If Siri was indeed useful search, how fun would it be watching Goog stock suffer.
Spot on how many years did Apple claim that music streaming (supported by MDN) would never catch on when anyone with half a brain knew that eventually it would only the degree was in question. Again how long did they ignore the potential of video streaming until others showed the way despite the head start they could have had had they seen the music opportunity. And all those years ago when YouTube was bought and everyone said there is no way to monetise it I remember thinking that eventually it would be monetised and better still offer a massive head start in visual based streaming services. That has not been fully exploited as yet and would likely have been less so sadly if Apple had done so. The vision at Apple has certain shunned the ‘Think Different’ mantra of late indeed for many years and even when Jobs was in control. the difference is that he found opportunities and exploited them despite the ones he missed or rejected.
Now its left for others to show the way and then copy it late to market. Too Microsoft for my liking.
music streaming is profitless……
WHAT ABOUT NEW MACS
32″ or 36″ iMac with A-series cpu’s… Or something built into a rack. Simple
Apple standalone CURATED monitors, none of that unsupervised designed stuff. See Google or Microsoft examples of that type of hardware.
Tim Cook, Steve’s worst mistake
Dear clueless Tim, the “stars” if your keynote are the ‘APPLE HARDWARE”, not some puffy music/tv star that’s gonna waste our time with some new song to sway our attention away from the fact you have neglected numerous sku’s for way too long. FOCUS on APPLE PRODUCTS… THAT is all the ‘star’ over you need to wow people…. clueless…