Apple TV+ Could Quickly Become World’s No. 2 Video Service Because Of This One Thing

Apple this week finally put numbers around its long-delayed TV+ subscription-video service, including a price, $4.99 a month. It’s a bargain, but delivers only a handful of shows at launch.

The offerings will presumably fill out quickly; after all, the company did order $6 billion worth of programs, like The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrell. Even all of Cupertino’s reported production meddling won’t delay forever the appearance of most of those shows.

A bargain price for high-profile shows from top talent will attract some customers, no doubt. Lots of competitors in the subscription-video space are betting on just that. But Apple’s real opportunity to quickly become the world’s second-biggest video-streaming service after Netflix is due to a little-noticed deal.

That deal: Buy a Mac laptop or desktop computer, an iPad, or an iPhone and you get TV+ free for a year. It could be a game-changer in the business of streaming, even if most observers have treated the deal as an afterthought.

But it’s no afterthought. Here’s why: Last year, worldwide, Apple sold 217.8 million iPhones. The three new iPhones didn’t get a rapturous response last week, but I’m betting they’ll sell many tens of millions of the $699 flagship iPhone11, and the $599 holdover from last year, the XR, for a lot of excellent reasons……[Read More]