Jan 2nd 2022
As violins play mournfully, Jon Stewart, an American comedian, makes a mock-emotional attraction to viewers. “Every year thousands of hours of high-quality content go unwatched,” he says critically. “Because good, hard-working people…don’t know how to find Apple TV+.”
The world’s most beneficial firm can afford just a few jokes at its personal expense. In the previous yr the tech colossus has raked in $366bn in income, a 3rd greater than in 2020. It is on observe to turn into the primary agency with a market capitalisation of $3trn (see chart 1). The mere billions that it’s investing in media, together with a brand new tv present hosted by Mr Stewart, symbolize pocket change to the Silicon Valley big.
Yet some 300 miles (480km) away in Hollywood, the place executives used to snigger in regards to the dilettantes from big-tech wind up north, Apple’s dabbling in media isn’t any joke. Though it lags properly behind Netflix and the like, Apple has sufficient cash to journey out the more and more costly streaming wars, which threaten to bankrupt different gamers. One query retains its rivals awake at evening: simply how huge in media does Apple need to be?
Apple turned a giant noise in music when it launched iTunes virtually precisely 21 years in the past. It took a minimize of songs’ gross sales, and shifted tons of of tens of millions of iPods for individuals to play them. Later iTunes offered films, too, and the agency hoped to make the identical mannequin work in tv, the place the market is an order of magnitude bigger than music. But paying for downloads was outmoded by all-you-can-eat subscriptions, pioneered by Spotify in music and Netflix in TV. Unlike downloaded music or movies, subscriptions may very well be simply transferred between platforms. So Apple, seeing little alternative to lock customers into its units, sat out the streaming revolution.
Today it’s again within the media sport, and a much bigger power than Mr Stewart’s joke implies (see chart 2). Apple Music, launched in 2015, is the second-largest streamer after Spotify. Apple TV+, now two years previous, is the fourth-largest video service exterior China by the variety of subscribers, in line with Omdia, a knowledge firm. In the previous couple of years Apple has made smaller media bets together with Arcade, a subscription gaming package deal, News+, a publishing bundle, and Fitness+, which gives video aerobics courses. There is discuss of an audiobooks service later this yr.
Like Amazon, one other tech big with a sideline in media, Apple has been capable of roll out its choices extra shortly in additional international locations than most of its Hollywood rivals, which have needed to construct direct-to-consumer companies from scratch. And it might afford to be beneficiant with free trials: lower than a 3rd of Apple TV+ subscribers pay for the service, Omdia believes. It has had some hits, notably “Ted Lasso”, which gained a string of Emmy awards in September. But it lacks a back-catalogue, resulting in excessive charges of buyer churn. Smaller opponents like Paramount+ (a part of ViacomCBS) and Peacock (from NBCUniversal) have restricted new choices however decades-old libraries.
Old-media companies have been puzzled by Apple’s on-off sorties into their territory, which generally appear half-hearted. Winning at streaming relies upon primarily on splurging on content material. But deep-pocketed Apple spent simply over $2bn on movie and television in 2021, towards Amazon’s $9bn and Netflix’s $14bn, estimates Ampere Analysis, a analysis firm. It doesn’t hassle to market its efforts a lot. And though medialand has cooed on the executives that Apple has poached, reminiscent of Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg from Sony and Richard Plepler from hbo, Silicon Valley insiders say that Apple retains its personal prime tech individuals on different tasks.
Indeed, whereas Hollywood frets about Apple’s subsequent transfer, many in Silicon Valley surprise why the corporate is in media in any respect. None of the markets is a giant prize for the world’s most beneficial agency. The complete international recorded music trade had gross sales of $22bn in 2020, lower than Apple made simply from promoting iPads. In a few month Apple generates as a lot income as Netflix makes in a yr. Apple’s TV enterprise will depend on shopping for reveals, relatively than extracting rents from others’ creations because it did within the iTunes days (and because it nonetheless does in its app retailer). And the “lock-in” impact on customers is weak, since Apple’s most important media providers can be found on all platforms.
Apple’s renewed curiosity in media is greatest defined by the transformation within the firm’s scale, which radically modifications the calculation of which side-projects are worthwhile. Fifteen years in the past, when Netflix began streaming, the billions concerned in operating a movie studio would have represented near a double-digit chunk of Apple’s annual revenues. Back then, Silicon Valley executives would fly right down to Los Angeles, considering “We’ve got a big chequebook, we could go and buy a bunch of content,” says Benedict Evans, a tech analyst and former enterprise capitalist. “And they would go and have their first meeting in LA. And the LA people would tell them the price”—at which level the tech individuals would go house. In 2021 Apple TV+’s estimated content material price range represented 0.6% of firm revenues: “play money”, as Mr Evans places it.
The price of operating a studio can due to this fact be justified by what are solely modest advantages to Apple. Streaming subscriptions might not lock individuals in as strongly as iTunes purchases did, however Apple’s numerous providers nonetheless sink “meat hooks” into prospects, making them spend extra time with their units and making it a bit extra inconvenient to go away Apple’s ecosystem, says Nick Lightle, a former Spotify government. The iPhone itself, which generated $192bn in gross sales up to now yr, greater than half of Apple’s complete revenues, is offered as a kind of subscription, factors out Mr Evans. Anything that reduces churn amongst iPhone subscribers by even a small quantity is more likely to pay for itself.
Media additionally makes good advertising. Producing movies with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks reinforces Apple’s premium model. Partnerships with pop stars preserve it cool. And at a time when Silicon Valley is underneath assault for monopolistic practices, invasion of privateness, subversion of democracy and extra, Apple is churning out worthy podcasts by Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel laureate, and educating health routines to youngsters. Not many corporations can consider a movie studio as a public-relations arm. A $3trn firm can.
“Apple is not playing the same game as many of its other [media] competitors,” says Julia Alexander of Parrot Analytics, one other knowledge agency. For one-trick rivals like Netflix, it’s an uncomfortably uneven competitors. Yet Apple’s broader priorities also can hamstring its media ambitions. Apple TV+’s lack of a library may very well be solved by shopping for another person’s; the agency has been touted as a possible purchaser of small studios like Lionsgate in addition to big ones like Disney. But Apple could also be cautious of upsetting America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has its sights on Silicon Valley. “If you’re Apple and the FTC is looking at big tech, the last thing you want to do is make a huge acquisition,” notes Ms Alexander. Lina Khan, the FTC’s tech-bashing head, is analyzing Amazon’s current $8.5bn buy of MGM Studios; by no means thoughts that the goal is a relative tiddler in a fragmented market. As corporations vie for management of tech’s subsequent commanding heights, from decentralised Web3 to digital actuality, attracting the eye of regulators by shopping for previous TV episodes may very well be a strategic error.
For so long as they proceed to assist promote its units and burnish its model, Apple will preserve dripping funding into its media providers. Doing so will get dearer: international spending on video content material will exceed $230bn in 2022, in line with Ampere, practically double what it was a decade in the past. As smaller opponents are outspent and quit, Apple’s place might even strengthen. But given its greater ambitions in different industries, in media Apple is more likely to be content material to stay to its position as a supporting actor.