Disney’s move caused dramatic shifts in the streaming services market. How will Apple respond?
It’s amazing how one company can change how you view pricing in an entire market… The media world was taken aback when Disney announced that its new Disney+ service would be initially priced at $7.99, dramatically less than competitors like Netflix and HBO Now. But this week Disney let the other shoe drop, saying that when its service launches on November 12, it will also be available in a bundle with Hulu and ESPN+ for $12.99. Not only will Disney+ undercut Netflix by $5 a month, but a subscription to all three of Disney’s streaming services will cost the same as Netflix.
How will Apple approach this new streaming landscape?
Apple Music costs $9.99 per month. Would it be out of the question for Apple to bundle it with Apple TV+ for that same magic price of $12.99?
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote the day Disney announced their pricing:
We can’t wait to see how, or if, Apple prices Apple TV+ at launch.
We’d really like to see a way to pay for all of the Apple services we choose for one price. Give us a bunch of tick boxes and let us choose our combination of iCloud storage, Apple Music, iTunes Match, etc. and let us pay a single price for all of our choices. — MacDailyNews, October 17, 2016
As soon as Apple launches their original content video service, an “Apple Prime” will make even more sense. — MacDailyNews, August 29, 2018
Apple could make a more compelling “Prime” bundle than even Amazon can offer because their original content sounds like it will be better and Apple Music + Apple News/Texture are unmatched. If they rolled some iCloud storage deal into it, it’d be tough to resist for many, many people! — MacDailyNews, February 14, 2019
Hopefully, some sort of bundle option will also be available for us all to be able to the combine Apple services we want for a single fee, lower than the cost of subscribing to them à la carte. — MacDailyNews, March 25, 2019