Apple’s Movie Business Fails

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 27, 6:50AM EDT

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Apple’s Movie Business Fails — © Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) has the cash war chest to stay in the streaming business forever, but should it?
Its best chance at being a leading streaming service is slipping away.
Also: Discover the Next Nvidia.

A look at Apple TV+ shows it does not have much content available. It has a few movies, but at the head of that list are minor TV and movie productions like “Bad Monkey” and “Ted Lasso.” Ted has already had its final season. Certainly, the service doesn’t look like the hundreds of shows Netflix has, many of which it produced itself. The same is true with Amazon Prime Video.

What Is Apple Thinking?

Rethinking its strategy.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has the cash war chest to stay in the streaming business forever. However, it appears that investment would be wasted. The New York Times recently ran a story with the headline, “Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses.” One example was a new movie titled “Wolfs,” which stars two of Hollywood’s most bankable stars: Brad Pitt and George Clooney. The film was supposed to open in movie theaters across the country. Now it will have a much more limited release and then move to streaming after a single week in theaters. Clooney seemed to be surprised.

Apple is learning the hard way what it is like to be among the last big companies to get into the streaming business. There is not much room to get market share. Aside from dominant Netflix and Amazon, there are Disney+, Max (formerly HBO Max), Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and half a dozen others trying to elbow their way to market share and profits. Services like Disney+ have lost billions of dollars along the way.

Apple’s theory, which did not work, was that it could use its installed base of 2 billion devices, like the iPhone and iPad, to drive subscriptions. That device owners apparently were not interested, which means Apple’s best chance at a streaming service has disappeared.

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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.