Anna Nicolaou and Tim Bradshaw for Financial Times:
Apple has committed more than $6 billion for original shows and movies ahead of the launch of its new video streaming service, a ballooning budget aimed at catching up with the likes of Netflix, Disney and AT&T-owned HBO.
The iPhone maker has been preparing its foray into media for years, after hiring Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, two well-known executives from Sony Pictures Television, to lead the charge in 2017.
The pair were initially armed with $1bn to commission original content over their first year but the budget has expanded and the total committed so far has passed $6bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
Unlike Netflix, which often pays content creators over several years, Apple pays earlier in the production process, once certain milestones are hit, according to people familiar with its approach.
The company’s new TV+ service will go live within the next two months, according to people briefed on its plans, in an attempt to pre-empt the launch of Disney Plus, which Disney has said it would debut in the US on November 12.
MacDailyNews Take: In it to win it.
It’s about time. Considering how Apple always made far more profits than Amazon and certainly more than Netflix, a person could think Apple could have been a leader in streaming, yet it was Amazon who bundled streaming content in Amazon Prime and made it a household name. Apple should have been able to kill it with content for Apple users and maybe AppleTV wouldn’t have stayed just as a hobby for so many years. It’s unlikely Apple’s streaming service will put much of a dent in Amazon’s or Netflix’s streaming services in terms of market share percentage, but Apple certainly could make it somewhat profitable for itself in terms of possibly driving greater hardware sales. Apple had such a great head-start with the iTunes store, but wasn’t able to take advantage of that lead. Netflix simply walked in and entirely took over the streaming market while Apple sat on a mountain of reserve cash and twiddled its thumbs. I hope this service quickly proves successful for Apple or the internet will be abuzz about another one of Apple’s monumental failures right after it launches.
Apple better buy Warner Media.or even Disney if they really want to win this race and beat Netflix. They lack a substantial content catalogue.