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
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Really liked mythic quest and after party. Could not recommend it more.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
It’s a loss leader. They make money selling the hardware and use AppleTV as a feature. That’s why the content is so good; it has to be to make it a compelling addition to their existing products.
That would make sense if it wasn't available on every other platform.
It’s still good marketing. People will associate a good service, with good/great shows/movies and without all the fluff that Netflix has, with a good company.
Netflix is just as good as Apple and doesn't annoy me with ads, failed skips and subscription upsells so I don't see that working, personally.
A downvote is just as good as an upvote.
appletv plus doesnt have ads. netflix is full of garbage, and requires 2 factor authorization like every couple weeks.
appletv plus doesnt have ads
Really? It doesn't play an ad for a different show every time you start playing a show? Its not littered with ads for MLS? Paramount? HBO?
Yes. It is.
Yeah but it got you to create an Apple account
Which I used to buy nothing
They can extract value from just the existence of your account. If they wanted to run an ad campaign to convince people to use them they can cross reference your email and any other demographic info.
Someone - maybe not you but someone like you - will buy an Apple product because of this.
Source: I used to work for a big data company
Doesn't sound like something worth $1B
That is pocket change for Apple. They have so much money they literally don't know what to do with it.
Do you go around throwing your pocket change into the streets?
So since Apple is probably not just throwing money away… what other reason could they have?
Poor planning?
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.
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.
good app interface
Maybe it's because I don't use any other Apple products, but I struggle with its interface
Interesting
stop cancelling schmigadoon and central park the only two shows on apple tv i liked.