Apple TV+ is bleeding cash as part of a larger slowdown in Apple’s services sector, per a recent report by Wayne Ma of The Information. The report indicates that Apple TV+ stands alone among Apple’s subscription offerings as the sole unprofitable service. Despite its subscriber base climbing to roughly 45 million last year, the platform continues to rack up annual losses exceeding $1 billion. Since its debut in 2019, Apple has poured over $5 billion annually into content, though that figure dropped by $500 million in 2024 following a cost-cutting directive from CEO Tim Cook and other top brass.
Hartley Charlton for MacRumors:
Cook apparently raised questions last year about several movie deals with Apple TV+ executives, including for the spy action-comedy film “Argylle.” The movie stars Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa, and cost $200 million to produce. Cook reportedly complained that the movie had not found a significant audience or generated more subscribers for Apple TV+.
The report explains that “the audience for Apple TV+ remains relatively small,” constituting less than 1% of total U.S. streaming service viewing. Netflix and Amazon represented 8.2% and 3.5% of total viewing in February…
Apple’s initial business plan for Apple TV+ predicted losses of between $15 billion and $20 billion over its first decade…
The report adds that most users do not sign up directly for Apple’s services, instead opting for an Apple One bundle, which inflates the perceived interest in each service. Many who sign up to Apple One are motivated to subscribe so primarily because of iCloud+ rather than other services. Without Apple One, Apple Arcade and Apple Fitness+ would not be profitable.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple TV+ is working. It’s just working slowly. Its quality over quantity strategy is sound and its library of high-value original content is becoming more substantial every day.
Breakouts hits that permeate the zeitgeist like “Ted Lasso” and “Severance” are doing most of the heavy lifting for getting the word out. Apple could certainly do a better job of promoting the service.
Apple TV+ could lose $1 billion annually until the first Tuesday after Infinity and Apple would be perfectly fine; it wouldn’t even notice.
Last year, Apple Inc. generated average revenue of $1.07 billion per day.
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Someone tell Elon!
Besides not being a product guy, the bean counter is now losing his beans?
They say that a loss-leader sometimes benefits company ROI… but, here?
The devolution of a great….
Because AppleTV+ is 99.99% woke crap. Everything they make, eventually goes to woke s**t. Ted Lasso is a great example. It starts off great, but then they try to slip the woke garbage in on you and ruin everything. It is a STRATEGY to trap you into watching woke crap you dont like.
These directors admit it:
https://www.thegamer.com/the-last-of-us-director-tricked-people-gay-romance-same-love-episode-three/
Right now the only show they make that hasn’t gone to woke s**t YET is Severance, which is really good. But I fear they will slip it in towards the end of the current or in the 3rd season. I hope not.
But this is further proof, that all this woke s**t is repellant and is subsidized. Apple needs to get off this woke crap and fire 90% of its employees who are almost all bozos, and start being innovative. It’s rotting within majority.
And Tim Cook is largely responsible for this rot and mismanagement. There is STILL no US production of iPhones and most of its products. There is NO diversification in meaningful ways of its production. Total loser. He has to go.
What Apple spends on original content is ridiculous. Plus, unlike other content producers, they cannot recover costs by licensing Apple content to other streaming services.
They could change strategy: get a streaming licence for the best content from around the world. They would then get a heck of a lot of subscribers, like Netflix does, and spend less.
When I got my Apple TV the product was pretty great. Especially the Apple TV app. It was a great “aggregator”? Is that the right word? Of viewing content management. With some problems but TONS of potential.
But as time went by they gradually pushed their OWN Apple TV plus content to now an EXTREME level. And support for third party subscriptions in the Apple TV app has almost died completely. It’s a little glitchy and over complicated now. Sad.
I’m not a heavy user, but Apple TV+ and the hardware seem fine. I haven’t had any problems with third party apps on the device, but I only have a few. When I want to watch a movie I can usually find it on Apple TV and rent it there. I find that the rentals on Apple TV are generally better quality, less compressed and full size. Sometimes someone wants to view a cheap version of a movie and I find it compressed and SD not HD.
Apple would have an audience if they actually made anything decent. They’ve had a few hits but they’ve had way more misses especially when they’re spending 150 and $200 million on movies that suck.
Between streaming media and the now-defunct smart car, Apple has lost its laserlike product focus.
I’m disappointed in the number of kids programs. Their catalog is thin.