Apple has invested 7 billion dollars into Apple TV+.
They give a year for free to Apple customers.
They’ve produced shows/films with names such as Oprah, Jennifer Anniston, Steve Carell, Jon Stewart and now Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio.
But why isn’t it very successful?
Apple TV+ has had over 50 million users, with over 90% joining due to purchasing an Apple product, such as a MacBook, iPhone, airpods or iPad.
Problems with that though.
Only 15-20% of users surveyed actually pay for it outside getting it as a bonus for buying Apple.
Over 90% of people don’t subscribe to it after the year free runs out.
People with it, over 50% of them do not use it more than once a month on average.
Apple’s brand has succeeded in watches, phones, laptops and basically everything it touches, but when it comes to this space, it’s done really poorly.
And the best reason for this I can give is this.
The Morning Show was Apple TV’s biggest show when launching.
15 million dollars an episode
Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Anniston & Steve Carrell leading the show.
Over 100 million spent on marketing the show.
Oh Twitter & Instagram, I did a quick check on hashtag use and it’s insanely low.
71,000 hashtags on Instagram.
Comparison, House of Cards by Netflix.
House of Cards, which when it came out was a similar show cast/audience wise and although it came out almost ten years ago, it had 480,000 hashtags.
The OA which came out five years ago with a no name cast and the entire first season has a budget of only about 15m, it almost tied with Morning Show at around 50,000 hashtags.
And the big one, Stranger Things is 13 million on Instagram and over a billion on TikTok.
And just for an idea of how much the 7 billion Apple invested could have gotten.
Lucas Film was sold for 4 billion.
Marvel was sold for 4 billion.
Pixar sold for 7.4 billion, after a decade of working with Disney already working with Pixar.
The lesson here seems to be this.
Oprah
Reese Witherspoon
The mountain of classic celebrities hired.
I don’t really think they sell many subscriptions or move people.
Disney+ is over 100 million subscribers and let the content be the star.
Netflix built a base relying on older content/some new stuff.
HBO MAX markets heavily on Warner’s library.
Apple TV+ made the Quibi mistake of overpaying for red carpet stars that really don’t have the same impact they had 20 years ago.