Apple TV Plus, launching Friday, is the gadget giant’s subscription video service with original TV shows and movies for $5 a month. It’s Apple’s combatant in the so-called streaming wars, one of a crop of deep-pocketed tech and media companies pouring money into creating subscription video services to take on Netflix.
The streaming wars are kicking off at a time when Apple is looking to its services — iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and, yes, Apple TV Plus, for more of its growth.
The most important elements to Apple TV Plus’ success or failure won’t be its lineup of shows right out of the starting gate. “We can debate whether this is the best show ever or not,” Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed, said in an interview. “Where you start is very different from where you are four years later. It’s apparent to me that Apple is very serious about ramping far beyond the initial four, five, six shows.” Skeptics overlook Apple TV Plus’ reach, he said. Apple TV Plus will be at the fingertips of possibly hundreds of millions of people at no extra cost, Greenfield estimated… Beyond the free accounts, though, is Apple’s real competitive weapon: the more than 900 million active iPhones out in the wild.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, it’s simple math. When you spend the kind of money on content that Apple is spending, there will invariably be shows that hook viewers who are watching for free thanks to their new Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or iPod Touch who will sign up for Apple TV+ when their free year ends, especially if Apple smartly keeps it at $4.99/month for at least the first three years.
Does AppleTV+ have a library of movies to stream? No.
Does it have a library of comedy or music specials to stream? No.
It going to take more than a handful of shows, regardless of how good they might be.
Agreed. Apple is bringing a knife to a gun fight. And it’s a rubber knife. The studios have DECADES worth of IP to bring to their streaming services. And as they are discovering, owning the rights to hit comedies is like minting money. Who could have predicted that reruns of Friends would be worth half a BILLION dollars 15 years after it went off the air?
Apple has no library, and unless they buy one, they will always be an also-ran. At least Netflix started with rights to everyone else’s programming. Let’s see where they are 3 years from now, when all their content deals expire…
Put it this way: imagine Apple launched iTunes, but you could only download artists that Apple had just signed.
You lost me at “Apple is bringing a knife to a gun fight” Anyone who says that, clearly knows little of Apple history…ha ha..
They ought to include all those iTunes concert festivals that they produced for years. Wish they still did those.
i suggest you.. “watch that space” 🙂
In reality, we really won’t know how successful this is for at least 1-2 years at minimum. Based on how Apple has described this service, it want to be the next HBO. Apple will be adding more and more TV shows, Movies, documentaries, etc. over the months and years. While at the same time renewing their current shows for more seasons. With the non-binge approach (Like HBO), this keeps viewers engaged in the AppleTV App on a daily basis. Not to mention, Apple instantly has 1 billion users that can access this content instantly across 100+ countries. Not sure many other services can claim that.