Apple TV+ Is a Failure

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 21, 7:10AM EDT

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Apple TV+ is far too small to compete in a world of much larger streaming services.
Given how long it has been in business, at its current size, Apple TV+ is a failure.

Apple TV+, the huge tech company’s streaming service, launched about the same time as Disney+. Disney+ has 154 million subscribers, while Apple TV+ has 25 million, estimated because Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) does not release numbers. Apple TV+ is far too small to compete in a world of much larger services owned by Netflix, Amazon, and media companies.

Research data shows that the average U.S. household has three or four streaming services. The churn rate in the industry is high. People shift from one service to another by canceling and taking a new subscription. It is a bruising world in which even the largest companies have lost billions of dollars since their services launched.

Services are also combining as they try to gain subscribers. Recently, Disney’s streaming services, Disney+ and Hulu, and WBD’s streaming service, Max (HBO Max merged with Discovery+), have been merged.

Each streaming service has to compete with the largest two by far. Highly profitable Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) has 279 million subscribers. Amazon Prime Video has over 200 million. Prime Video has unique advantages, as it is part of Prime, an e-commerce loyalty program that is essential to the company’s success. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has an estimated 170 million Prime members in the United States.

What is Apple TV+’s distinctive feature? It makes its original shows, but so do its competitors. It has a library of shows produced elsewhere, and so do its competitors. Apple TV+ has been in business long enough that, at its current size, it is a failure.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.