Apple could crush Netflix, Spotify, and Disney+ with a $25 per month all-inclusive plan, contends Jason Aten for Inc.:
There’s no doubt that Apple is playing to win. The company has already said that it will offer a year of Apple TV+ for free for anyone who buys a new iPhone, Mac, or iPad this fall, meaning it could easily have 80-100 million subscribers by the new year. That number would put it far ahead of every other service — even though most of those users won’t actually generate revenue for the company until the following year…
There’s one thing it can do that would be a crushing blow to other companies including Netflix, Amazon, and Disney: an all-in-one subscription.
Here’s the killer bundle: TV+, Music, News+, Arcade, iCloud for one monthly price. Right now, those services cost more than $30, depending on how much iCloud storage you choose, but imagine getting them all for, say, $25 a month. Call it Apple+… Not only does Apple gain incremental revenue with this idea, but it can do so at the expense of its competitors. It’s not only Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+ that should be worried. A plan like this could be entice some people to cancel other services.
In that case, I’d be very worried if I were Spotify.
MacDailyNews Take: Do it, Apple! Spotify, especially, for all of their whining as Apple Music overtakes them, deserves to be ground into a fine paste.
Of course, an Apple bundle is something we’ve been wanting for years:
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
Yes, please! We’ve long been hoping for some sort of an “Apple Prime” bundle option or options that will reward those of us who have multiple Apple subscriptions (Apple Music, Apple News+, iCloud storage, etc.). — MacDailyNews, October 7, 2019
As we wrote last month here and here:
$99 per month gets you an iPhone and every Apple service. Presented like that, it’d be insanely irresistible. And every “new to iPhone” customer will immediately and irrevocably be steeped in Apple’s Hotel California ecosystem… We bet if Apple offered iPhones along with services bundled into one monthly fee – offer tick boxes for Apple TV+, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, iCloud Storage, etc. – they’d have a winning sales strategy (Apple Prime) on their hands!
I’m waiting until November to get the new iPhone. Can trade in now but no point if I can get AppleTV+ for a year.
This also brings up the cable cutting question again. I’m spending over 200 a month for cable tv. Sure DVR is good but could also just buy the programs I like and still would come out on top.
Sports are an issue since I get to watch soccer, rugby from the UK here in the states. I will need to investigate how to buy that a la carte.
FYI, if you buy a device now, you still get a year of Apple TV+ for free starting in November…
Yes. Customers who purchase any new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac or iPod touch starting September 10, 2019, can enjoy one year of Apple TV+ for free.
Beginning November 1, customers can initiate the one-year free offer in the Apple TV app on the device running the latest software.
Doesn’t make much sense if Apple loses money at $25/month, given all the content licensing and infrastructure required. I’d much prefer it if Apple partnered with Disney with a $50-60/month service – the fewer locations/services/billing accounts, the better. Then you start adding the others, or at least seamless options to quickly access them, again with one account. The place I’d like to get back to is easily accessible, customizable live media (like the old days – as easy as flipping through channels on cable) with quick and easy access to as much on-demand legacy and new content streaming media as we want, for less than we used to pay for cable (less than 100-150/month total for all media). More partnering on their end, less fragmentation to our experience.
Yes Apple has more money to give away Netflix is reaching the end Hollywood is more than happy to move on to a new ….
Yes! I want this! Come on Apple, let’s go!
Apple would not necessarily lose money by providing a services bundle for $25, especially if they could get a few hundred million subscribers.
Besides, an Apple bundle would result in the sale of more iPhones, iPads, and Macs. If Apple could add 20 million iPhone sales per year as a result of the bundle, that would add $15B annual revenue and $5B of annual profits to Apple’s coffers.
Leave iCloud out of it. So many people do not use it due to it’s lack of sophistication. iCloud has multiple tiers of storage space, further complicating it to be bundled.
Rather, include everything else for $20. I ran this buy a friend and it went like this:
Me: Do you have Apple Music?
Friend: Yes.
Me: You are interested in Apple TV+?
Friend: Yes, and it’s only $4.99 a month.
Me: What if you could have Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News for $19.99 a month?
Friend: Oh, I could go for that. That’s a nice bundle.
Bingo!… This sells value in a person’s mind. A bundle is not likely to arrive until sometime next year, but once Apple TV+ adds more shows and Apple Arcade develops more “gotta play it” games, it’ll make sense to tens of millions of people.
Some people care about music, while others not at all. Some care about gaming, but not News, and others vice versa.
The bundle of services Apple is developing are amazingly diverse and should have a different hook – provide each segment is valued – for a very wide subscriber base.
If Netflix were smart, they would have acquired Spotify long ago, and followed along in Amazon’s model of dabbling in some hardware, maybe a streaming box and wireless speakers, where their bundle solution is less per month if you own the box, etc.
Rather, Netflix and Spotify did nothing to get out of their one-hit-wonder worlds… They have no other forms of revenue and profits to defend their streaming services with, and that will be their death knell.
No. Because. Content.
Exactly! Apple has lined up a few shows that sound interesting. A few.
Exactly, for Apple its a hobby. If they really want to be leading they should but Warner or Disney.
Apple could have a more compelling bundle than amazon because they might have some good content.
$5B in additional iStuff profit doesn’t pay for 1 episode of the Jennifer Aniston show. I suppose they could operate it at a loss, but to what end? So they can put competitors out of business and then jack up the price on the customer when they win the market?
Sounds awful. Apple, just charge enough to break the service even and let it work as a cost-neutral commercial for the hardware.
Little Timmy’s woke TV network. Can’t wait….
99.00 a month for the phone and services is a lot of money. It’s cheaper to get new iPhone and get it cheaper. All the kids would be on arcade all during school.