Apple TV+ Faces $1 Billion Losses Yearly in Streaming Battle

In This Article

• AppleTV+’s Financial Struggles and Challenges
• Apple TV+ as Compared to Other Streaming Services
• Subscription Prices of AppleTV+ Vs Others

Apple TV+, the video streaming service featuring Apple Originals, is reportedly experiencing financial challenges and annually estimates a loss of $1 billion. These figures indicate the substantial investment and the pressure of competition among the crowded streaming members of the market. It is one of the most popular live-streaming services and is empowered by 45 million subscribers.

According to a random report published on Thursday, the tech giant Apple is spending approximately $4.5 billion every year on the content, but the resources say that it is down from $5 billion since last year.

Apple knows about the challenges and trends to retain its position in the market; therefore, it has expanded the original programming along with the strategic partnership. The aim is to get more subscribers annually to offset the operational costs.

AppleTV+’s Financial Struggles and Challenges

Despite having a rush of fans with 45 million subscribers, Apple TV+ is facing financial challenges and reports huge losses every year. It seems like Apple TV+ is the only service from Apple showing a remarkable financial struggle.

Launched in 2019, Apple TV is one of the giant projects from the company but reportedly incurs the annual loss. With the huge content expenditure of $5 billion on the content, the loss is reduced to $500 million, but still, it is a big amount.

The main financial strain is the high production cost and advertisements. The official digits say that each episode of the acclaimed series “Severance” costs $20 million. There are multiple other programs in the list, but still, a lower number of subscribers is causing the financial strain because of the limited content library.

Apple TV+ as Compared to Other Streaming Services

Offering acclaimed series like “Ted Lasso,” “The Morning Show,” and “Severance,” Apple focuses on the original content. It has a different approach to the content library and original content as compared to its rivals like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. The other services focus on the extensive library containing the original content along with the license production. Hence, they have more options for the viewers and a big variety. Similarly, Disney+ shows the vast collection from its brand content and partners like Star Wars and Marvel.

The user experience matters a lot when targeting huge subscribers. Apple TV+ shows the ultimate experience on multiple Apple devices such as smartphones, TVs, and smartwatches, but all the services are limited to iOS users, and Apple does not have anything for the strong strength of Android users. On the other hand, the rivals offer their services to every user to grab a large audience.

As of 2024, Netflix subscribers are multiple times more than Apple TV+. The figures show the 302 million subscribers from Netflix, while AppleTV+ is still on 45 million. As a result, AppleTV+ has only 1% of the streaming market share, yet Netflix is enjoying 8.2%.

Service’s ongoing loss indicates that Apple TV+ has to change its strategies to establish a foothold in the streaming market. 

Working on the strategies is the ultimate solution to deal with the market competition. Similarly, in this era of artificial intelligence, it is critical to integrate such innovative techniques into the businesses and web solutions to withstand the tough competition; therefore, people are getting the services from Weborik Hub to integrate the remarkable services of AI integration and make their systems strong and flawless.

Subscription Prices of AppleTV+ Vs Others

A big reason behind the financial challenges of a company or the number of users is its financial plans. The first thing that came into the expert’s mind when analyzing the core reason behind the $1 billion loss was its subscription charges, but the comparison shows that Apple’s financial strategy for the subscription charges is the same as its rivals. The table below indicates the comparison.

Hence, the main reason behind the Apple TV+ loss may be its limited access to the users, as only Apple users can get this video streaming service. Moreover, the limited library options in the same subscription charges are the cause behind the problem.