Apple is losing more than $1 billion a year on its streaming service Apple TV+, the Information reported today, citing two people familiar with the matter.

Apple has spent more than $5 billion a year on content since launching Apple TV+ in 2019 but trimmed that budget by around $500 million last year, the report said.

  • floo@retrolemmy.com
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    10 days ago

    That’s sad to hear. The content on there is amazing for the most part. But, apparently, not cluttering it up with a bunch of junk is actually costing them somehow.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Good content is expensive. And from what I understand, the financials are all fucked up across the industry.

      Just look at Netflix, they just blew $320 million on a huge piece of garbage, The Electric State.

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Apple has a literal 100 billion in cash reserves. They’ll be just fine with losing a billion a year while becoming THE source for premium TV content

  • athairmor@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    *citation needed

    They don’t say where they get these numbers other than “two people” cited in a paywalled article.

    Apple One has over 1 billion subscribers. I’m sure they can afford a loss leader like that.

    The only way to know if this true is if Apple says so or they just stop producing content.

    • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Apple One has over 1 billion subscribers. I’m sure they can afford a loss leader like that.

      This is not true. According to a 2022 Press Release, Apple has 900 million paid subscriptions across ALL Apple services. Many of which are App Store-based subscriptions for third party services. The figure also includes things like Apple Care and Apple Financial Services.

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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    10 days ago

    Just looking at the numbers, they are spending $5G and losing $1G. Their subscriptions are growing. So if they grow another 25% they are making money. (Ignoring infrastructure costs which are most likely a tiny fraction of per-user revenue.) They also just launched an Android app. So I think their story is looking pretty good. Not even considering that it raises the value of Apple TV hardware, their other devices and gives them more lock-in for customers in general that seems like a great investment they made.

  • aldfin@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    Apple TV+ is a great service, good app interface and some decent series there too. Too bad I had to get rid of it due to the current US administration and their policies. Apart from the default apps I switched everything to European and/or non-profit open source alternatives, which was surprisingly easy.

    • tleb@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      good app interface

      Maybe it’s because I don’t use any other Apple products, but I struggle with its interface