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> Analysts have suggested Apple TV+ could top 100 million subscribers in the next half-decade, which would make it a major challenger to Netflix and Amazon. Do

> Analysts have suggested Apple TV+ could top 100 million subscribers in the next half-decade, which would make it a major challenger to Netflix and Amazon. Doesn't Prime have 100 million US subscribers now? And Netflix is something like 60 million. I guess these analysts predict they'll both stagnate while Apple will grow from 0 to 100 million in 5 years?

Zenst 7y ago
They may do what they did with a certain U2 album and automatically give all their users a free subscription for 3 months and then go - hey look we have all these subscribers. That way they could technically say they have millions of users of which, many will translate into subscribers. More so if they bundle in some other services and piggyback that, ala Amazon's approach with prime subscribers.
ajmurmann 7y ago
I'm always bothered by the "either/or" framing. Who only subscribes to a single streaming service? A trend I could set though (and I'm doing this myself) is the locust approach to streaming. You subscribe to a streaming service. Watch everything you want and then unsubscribe. Then you move on to the next and come back to each every few months or so. I don't think one more streaming service is gonna paint the envelope here.
- taneq 7y ago
  > Who only subscribes to a single streaming service? This was the whole attraction of Netflix - it was a single service that got you most of what you wanted. Now there's Netflix, Stan, Amazon, Disney Channel, etc. A few do what you're describing here. One of our friends switches back and forth between Netflix and Stan every three months. But more and more of my friends who were perfectly happy to pay for 1-2 streaming services are going back to good old torrents because none of the streaming services offer a good value proposition any more.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > This was the whole attraction of Netflix Yes, but everyone (including Netflix, analysts, and every observer with two brain cells to rub together) new that was temporary, and it started breaking down when Blockbuster started aggressively bidding for exclusives for their streaming service. Netflix having everything was only going to happen as long as everyone else was standing back to see if Netflix could prove streaming a viable market worth competing for.
    - taneq 7y ago
      True, but sadly all Netflix proved was that streaming everything was a viable market, not that everyone streaming their own content on competing silos was a viable market. And now the pie is in too many slices and nobody wants to buy it.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > And now the pie is in too many slices and nobody wants to buy it. And yet the total number and $ value of streaming subscriptions sold in the market is going up as more options emerge, not down.
        taneq 7y ago
        Well yeah, the market is still expanding rapidly. That doesn't mean the value to each individual customer isn't diminishing.
        kuroikyu 7y ago
        But it can mean that and, in the case of Disney+ it does mean that. Content that was (and some still is) avaliale on Netflix UK will now be moved to Disney's new subscription platform. In this case, Netflix lost value for anyone that used to consume this content there. With more subscriptions, they will steal or claim content from existing ones, effectively driving their value down. Sure some will create content, as they have been doing for a while now but that doesn't change the fact that if I want to watch The Office, I used to have to use a VPN to watch it through Netflix US, now it's on Amazon Prime but where will it be in 2 years?
- mrweasel 7y ago
  Switching frequently between service is exactly what the companies don't want. I agree that this might be where we're headed, but the idea of a subscription is to have a recurring and predictable stream of income. The best solution for the content industry as a whole would be to set up a clearing house, that provides access to all movies and series, streaming services should then be able to purchase the content they want on their service. That would allow the services to compete on the quality of their service, not their catalog. Let's face it consumers don't care if Star Wars is created by Disney or Warner Bros or that Breaking Bad is distributed by Sony.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    So, who gets to be this tollbooth for all content?
  - Mindwipe 7y ago
    Given exclusivity is very provably a huge revenue driver any CEO who did such a thing would rightly get the sack immediately.
stanmancan 7y ago
Prime is an odd one though since nobody subscribes to Prime Video specifically, it’s a value add included with their Prime membership. Is it fair to compare that number to Netflix or Apple TV when they’re both stand alone products?
- dewey 7y ago
  I know this is just for the US but just to clarify. The Prime Video included in your Prime subscription is only available in a few countries (US, DE, GB,...) all other countries have primevideo.com which is a stand-alone video only subscription.
  - codedinosaur 7y ago
    I'm in India and we use primevideo.com. It does come as part of the Amazon Prime subscription.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    That may be because Amazon Prime doesn't make sense in some countries. Example: Free two day delivery doesn't make sense if you can expect free/cheap next-day delivery from local webshops. Other Amazon Prime benefits requires that Amazon have a local presence in your country or area, so it makes sense that it's limited to countries where Amazon at least have distribution centers.
    - dewey 7y ago
      It also makes sense because primevideo.com looks like it was built from scratch and isn’t integrated in the “normal” Amazon.tld that’s not available in a lot of countries. It was very buggy in the beginning and incrementally got improved, they probably couldn’t move that fast if it was integrated into the main site too.
    - CamelCaseName 7y ago
      Just to add to your comment, Amazon Prime also doesn't make sense in countries with a fairly poor Amazon presence / high shipping costs. E.g. Canada.
lonnyk 7y ago
Netflix has 151 million subscribers https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-...
jorvi 7y ago
Much like Apple Music, Apple TV plus will leverage a large contingent of people who have no streaming TV subscription but do have iDevices. Before the introduction of Apple Music it seemed like Spotify/Deezer/Tidal/Pandora/Google Music had the market divvied up pretty well, but because every time you tapped the 'Music' app your iPhone would nag you with 'would you like to try Apple Music?' a lot of people signed up, and Apple Music subscriber count shot up.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Did anyone think Tidal, Google Music, Pandora, Deezer has significant market share? Deezer and Pandora probably had a couple of million each. Combined they didn’t have that much. Pandora also wasn’t the same as it was just radio. Tidal hasn’t ever had many subscribers. Spotify was the main and only thing around with MOG/Beats being a much smaller competitor alongside a few others like Napster/Rhapsody and Rdio before it went defunct. This is unlike tv streaming which is more diversified and Apple can’t come in and give you everything like how it was with music.

Zenst 7y ago

They may do what they did with a certain U2 album and automatically give all their users a free subscription for 3 months and then go - hey look we have all these subscribers. That way they could technically say they have millions of users of which, many will translate into subscribers. More so if they bundle in some other services and piggyback that, ala Amazon's approach with prime subscribers.

ajmurmann 7y ago

I'm always bothered by the "either/or" framing. Who only subscribes to a single streaming service? A trend I could set though (and I'm doing this myself) is the locust approach to streaming. You subscribe to a streaming service. Watch everything you want and then unsubscribe. Then you move on to the next and come back to each every few months or so. I don't think one more streaming service is gonna paint the envelope here.

taneq 7y ago
> Who only subscribes to a single streaming service? This was the whole attraction of Netflix - it was a single service that got you most of what you wanted. Now there's Netflix, Stan, Amazon, Disney Channel, etc. A few do what you're describing here. One of our friends switches back and forth between Netflix and Stan every three months. But more and more of my friends who were perfectly happy to pay for 1-2 streaming services are going back to good old torrents because none of the streaming services offer a good value proposition any more.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > This was the whole attraction of Netflix Yes, but everyone (including Netflix, analysts, and every observer with two brain cells to rub together) new that was temporary, and it started breaking down when Blockbuster started aggressively bidding for exclusives for their streaming service. Netflix having everything was only going to happen as long as everyone else was standing back to see if Netflix could prove streaming a viable market worth competing for.
  - taneq 7y ago
    True, but sadly all Netflix proved was that streaming everything was a viable market, not that everyone streaming their own content on competing silos was a viable market. And now the pie is in too many slices and nobody wants to buy it.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > And now the pie is in too many slices and nobody wants to buy it. And yet the total number and $ value of streaming subscriptions sold in the market is going up as more options emerge, not down.
      - taneq 7y ago
        Well yeah, the market is still expanding rapidly. That doesn't mean the value to each individual customer isn't diminishing.
        kuroikyu 7y ago
        But it can mean that and, in the case of Disney+ it does mean that. Content that was (and some still is) avaliale on Netflix UK will now be moved to Disney's new subscription platform. In this case, Netflix lost value for anyone that used to consume this content there. With more subscriptions, they will steal or claim content from existing ones, effectively driving their value down. Sure some will create content, as they have been doing for a while now but that doesn't change the fact that if I want to watch The Office, I used to have to use a VPN to watch it through Netflix US, now it's on Amazon Prime but where will it be in 2 years?
mrweasel 7y ago
Switching frequently between service is exactly what the companies don't want. I agree that this might be where we're headed, but the idea of a subscription is to have a recurring and predictable stream of income. The best solution for the content industry as a whole would be to set up a clearing house, that provides access to all movies and series, streaming services should then be able to purchase the content they want on their service. That would allow the services to compete on the quality of their service, not their catalog. Let's face it consumers don't care if Star Wars is created by Disney or Warner Bros or that Breaking Bad is distributed by Sony.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  So, who gets to be this tollbooth for all content?
- Mindwipe 7y ago
  Given exclusivity is very provably a huge revenue driver any CEO who did such a thing would rightly get the sack immediately.

stanmancan 7y ago

Prime is an odd one though since nobody subscribes to Prime Video specifically, it’s a value add included with their Prime membership. Is it fair to compare that number to Netflix or Apple TV when they’re both stand alone products?

dewey 7y ago
I know this is just for the US but just to clarify. The Prime Video included in your Prime subscription is only available in a few countries (US, DE, GB,...) all other countries have primevideo.com which is a stand-alone video only subscription.
- codedinosaur 7y ago
  I'm in India and we use primevideo.com. It does come as part of the Amazon Prime subscription.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  That may be because Amazon Prime doesn't make sense in some countries. Example: Free two day delivery doesn't make sense if you can expect free/cheap next-day delivery from local webshops. Other Amazon Prime benefits requires that Amazon have a local presence in your country or area, so it makes sense that it's limited to countries where Amazon at least have distribution centers.
  - dewey 7y ago
    It also makes sense because primevideo.com looks like it was built from scratch and isn’t integrated in the “normal” Amazon.tld that’s not available in a lot of countries. It was very buggy in the beginning and incrementally got improved, they probably couldn’t move that fast if it was integrated into the main site too.
  - CamelCaseName 7y ago
    Just to add to your comment, Amazon Prime also doesn't make sense in countries with a fairly poor Amazon presence / high shipping costs. E.g. Canada.

lonnyk 7y ago

Netflix has 151 million subscribers https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-...

jorvi 7y ago

Much like Apple Music, Apple TV plus will leverage a large contingent of people who have no streaming TV subscription but do have iDevices. Before the introduction of Apple Music it seemed like Spotify/Deezer/Tidal/Pandora/Google Music had the market divvied up pretty well, but because every time you tapped the 'Music' app your iPhone would nag you with 'would you like to try Apple Music?' a lot of people signed up, and Apple Music subscriber count shot up.

skinnymuch 7y ago
Did anyone think Tidal, Google Music, Pandora, Deezer has significant market share? Deezer and Pandora probably had a couple of million each. Combined they didn’t have that much. Pandora also wasn’t the same as it was just radio. Tidal hasn’t ever had many subscribers. Spotify was the main and only thing around with MOG/Beats being a much smaller competitor alongside a few others like Napster/Rhapsody and Rdio before it went defunct. This is unlike tv streaming which is more diversified and Apple can’t come in and give you everything like how it was with music.