Apple Inc has on Monday, 25th March, 2019 launched a streaming television service, a credit card and an online gaming arcade. This new development was described by many as a reaffirmation of Apple Inc an entertainment and services company as well as makers of iPhones.
Apple Inc unveiled a television and movie subscription service called Apple TV+ that will stream original television shows and movies on Monday, 25th March, 2019. The unveiling ceremony was attended by many including Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.
As against what many would have expected the star-studded unveiling ceremony could not in any way sway investors towards the Apple shares at it experiences a downward movement of 1.2 percent.
The Apple TV+ is however not going to have a field day in the streaming industry as they have to compete with well established brands Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc who are already in the streaming video war years before Apple is venturing into it. How Apple TV+ is going to fare in the industry is largely undetermined at the moment as it did not reveal its pricing in the launching ceremony.
According to an analyst at Chatham Road Partners, Colin Gillis, “While Apple may introduce a bigger roster of original content than Amazon and Netflix during their respective launches, the streaming market has arguably already reached a level of saturation and consumer fatigue in the United States.”
A review of the features of Apple TV+ showed that the programming will come through a revamped television-watching app for users of Apple’s 1.4 billion gadgets worldwide, as well as owners of smart TVs and other devices. This strategy taken by Apple is a different approach of offering paid “channels” from AT&T Inc’s HBO, Lions Gate Entertainment’s Starz and CBS Corp’s Showtime, alongside its own content.
Its revamped app for subscribing to channels from others will come out in May, but Apple’s own original shows will not arrive until autumn, with pricing not yet announced. Apple said both its TV+ shows and the new version of the TV app will be available in more than 100 countries.
Apple also introduced a credit card, a digital video game arcade, and added hundreds of magazines to its news app at an event at its Cupertino, California, headquarters.
The launches come as Apple struggles with falling iPhone sales, which has prompted the company to turn more of its attention to services that provide regular subscription revenue.
Hollywood celebrities helped debut the revamped television offering. Apple has commissioned programming from Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Winfrey, Spielberg and others.
Winfrey, who announced a global book club and two documentaries, said she was drawn to Apple in part by its reach. “They’re in a billion pockets, y’all,” she said, referring to Apple’s ubiquitous devices.
Alongside its own iPhones, iPads and iMacs, Apple will make the programming widely available through smart TVs and devices from Roku Inc and others, departing from the past where it has tended to keep content exclusively on its own hardware.
During the presentation ceremony, there is one remarkable strategy which Apple executives stressed all through which is the privacy protection for consumers as they shop and consume content. According to D.A. Davidson & Co analyst, Thomas Forte, “The most important point for today was advertising and privacy.”
Apple also used the opportunity to announce that its free news app Apple News+ will now come in paid-subscription version is it currently curates a range of news articles and will include 300 magazines including National Geographic, People, Popular Science, Billboard and the New Yorker. Apple said it would cost $9.99 a month.