Exactly why I don't buy an Apple TV. We don't need any more heavy handed Apple politically correct censorship.
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Apple to Ramp Up Original Content, Considered Buying Time Warner Last Year
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Exactly why I don't buy an Apple TV. We don't need any more heavy handed Apple politically correct censorship.
Maybe it was a funny coincidence: "Our skinny content only consists of A, R, S, E " - which sounds like british for: Our skinny content only consists of B, U, T, T
What's your point exactly???? That Apple has been more profitable under Tim than Jobs???
Plus, many people thought Netflix was stupid to start creating original content. If Apple bought Time Warner Inc. it would've given them a lot of leverage with content distributors as well as with other content owners.
Is the picture very revealing? I can't read any of the names, and the picture itself doesn't make clear which have been successes and which have been failures. If there's a point to the picture, I don't know what it is.
I'm amazed nobody has mentioned the glorious AOL/Time Warner merger.
Should Apple buy Time Warner, at a P/E of about 15 and Market Cap of $58 billion?
Should Apple buy Netflix, at a P/E of about 350 and a Market Cap of $43.6 billion? (If Netflix was selling at a P/E of 15, its Market Cap would be about $1.9 billion.)
Time Warner may be old, boring media (music, movies, broadcast TV, cable TV), but it owns a huge vault of content in just about every medium. A Netflix-like service that does nothing more than pull from all the Time Warner brands (rather than brand-specific like HBO Now) would be very attractive, and due to its ongoing relationships with other content producers and distributors, the other content companies will come on board as well. Time Warner's team would have far fewer problems launching such a service than Eddie Cue/Jimmy Iovine/Dr. Dre would on their own - Time Warner's own content holdings give it huge leverage. It'd be more like, "This is happening with or without you. You want a piece of it, or not?"
What of Netflix? Before it reaches corporate maturity, to justify its current price, Netflix would have to grow by a factor of 30 - assuming no change in subscription prices/growth by economic inflation, that means going from 80 million subscribers to 2.4 billion. Seems a pretty daunting task - if a similar, competing service came to dominate the market in China or India, the chances of reaching 2.4 billion (or "just" 1.2 billion) seem pretty dim.
Further, Netflix' biggest potential competitor is already in place - YouTube (Alphabet/Google). (Amazon has plenty of potential, too.) Alphabet, as always, is focused on advertising revenue rather than subscriptions, but nothing precludes adding subscriptions to their revenue mix (I think I read that something of the sort may already be in the works).
Compared to Time Warner, Netflix owns zero content - the last couple of years worth of HBO original content eclipses everything Netflix owns. There's an old saying, "Content is king." No matter what service Apple launches based on Time Warner content, that same Time Warner catalog continues to rake in bucks in all the old familiar places. It can and does show up on "competing" networks and services on a constant basis - no matter what content delivery companies come out on top, Time Warner content will be there.
So, I think Time Warner is by far the better target for Apple (Disney's another). Netflix might do well to merge with Time Warner or Disney (too small to acquire outright), but it wouldn't be a very attractive deal for shareholders - again, the chances of Netflix growing to justify its current price don't seem all that good to me.
An Apple/Disney combination would have one more interesting, albeit meaningless side-effect - the "grand reunification" of the Steve Jobs Universe (Laurene Powell Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder at 7.5%, due to the Pixar merger).
Should Apple buy Time Warner, at a P/E of about 15 and Market Cap of $58 billion?
Should Apple buy Netflix, at a P/E of about 350 and a Market Cap of $43.6 billion? (If Netflix was selling at a P/E of 15, its Market Cap would be about $1.9 billion.)
Time Warner may be old, boring media (music, movies, broadcast TV, cable TV), but it owns a huge vault of content in just about every medium. A Netflix-like service that does nothing more than pull from all the Time Warner brands (rather than brand-specific like HBO Now) would be very attractive, and due to its ongoing relationships with other content producers and distributors, the other content companies will come on board as well. Time Warner's team would have far fewer problems launching such a service than Eddie Cue/Jimmy Iovine/Dr. Dre would on their own - Time Warner's own content holdings give it huge leverage. It'd be more like, "This is happening with or without you. You want a piece of it, or not?"
What of Netflix? Before it reaches corporate maturity, to justify its current price, Netflix would have to grow by a factor of 30 - assuming no change in subscription prices/growth by economic inflation, that means going from 80 million subscribers to 2.4 billion. Seems a pretty daunting task - if a similar, competing service came to dominate the market in China or India, the chances of reaching 2.4 billion (or "just" 1.2 billion) seem pretty dim.
Further, Netflix' biggest potential competitor is already in place - YouTube (Alphabet/Google). (Amazon has plenty of potential, too.) Alphabet, as always, is focused on advertising revenue rather than subscriptions, but nothing precludes adding subscriptions to their revenue mix (I think I read that something of the sort may already be in the works).
Compared to Time Warner, Netflix owns zero content - the last couple of years worth of HBO original content eclipses everything Netflix owns. There's an old saying, "Content is king." No matter what service Apple launches based on Time Warner content, that same Time Warner catalog continues to rake in bucks in all the old familiar places. It can and does show up on "competing" networks and services on a constant basis - no matter what content delivery companies come out on top, Time Warner content will be there.
So, I think Time Warner is by far the better target for Apple (Disney's another). Netflix might do well to merge with Time Warner or Disney (too small to acquire outright), but it wouldn't be a very attractive deal for shareholders - again, the chances of Netflix growing to justify its current price don't seem all that good to me.
An Apple/Disney combination would have one more interesting, albeit meaningless side-effect - the "grand reunification" of the Steve Jobs Universe (Laurene Powell Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder at 7.5%, due to the Pixar merger).
That picture is horrible. Damn near unreadable. I think the poster may have been intimating that Apple acquires promising companies and technology then subsequently waters them down to fit into the Apple-verse. I share some of that sentiment. I'm not a fan of Apple acquiring a TW type of entity. Especially if content would be exclusive to Apple devices. I'd feel the same if it was Google or MS making the same type of acquisition. Apple creating their own content? I'm all for that. Hopefully they do. Other players have done surprisingly well going that route and I see no reason Apple wouldn't be just as successful.
Apple would be buying story development and production expertise and an IP archive to go along with it. They would instantly be one of the sixth biggest media conglomerates in the world straddling the old media landscape and the new. HBO has really led the way as far as original programming goes - aside from passing on Mad Men their track record is pretty amazing.
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Totally agree with you. Netflix is a pass. However the corporate cultures established by both Disney and Apple are too distinct to create any special synergy by merging IMO. Eisner and Jobs had a horrible relationship and only Iger was able to step in and make the relationship w/Apple successful, or so the story goes. What with the theme parks and all (OK I do see interesting synergy there w/the Disney wristband technology - totally fascinating story there) I think it would be a big messy affair. But the Time Warner purchase? That makes a lot of sense to me.
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Yeah. I just tossed Disney out there for fun. I've followed the Disney company for a long time, and have drawn parallels and contrasts between Walt Disney and Steve Jobs (and what happened to both companies after their deaths) in a number of posts. The specifics of CEO match-ups are of course critical at the startup (again, look at the history of AOL/Time Warner), but hardly the only factors to consider. Overall corporate cultures... Some parts of Disney are far more compatible with Apple than any part of TW (theme parks and animation culture carry an imprint from Walt that is very consistent with Apple's imprint from Steve), but other parts of Disney are probably little different than TW - big media is big media, more or less.
Why not take Netflix? If they own Netflix, they'll own Roku. They both share the same building in Northern Cali. And Roku has the largest amount of development for streaming services. They'd monopolize that while taking out Amazon and Google at the same time in the streaming service market.
No risks?:
1. Apple Watch.
2. New MacBook.
3. Beats.
4. Apple Music.
5. Sapphire Glass manufacturing.
6. Huge move into China.
Undoubtably others.
Over 90 million people in the US alone pay an average of $100+ a month for cable/satellite. (30 million satellite subscribers, 60 million cable subscribers)
So, there are a LOT of people who this would be valuable.
You call those risks?
A smart watch was out long before Apple released one.
New Macbook? How is that a risk?
Beats? How is that a risk?
Apple Music? That's the not the first service of it's kind in the industry.
Sapphire glass manufacturing? Again, how is that a risk.
Move into China? That's just a business strategy, again not a risk.
Everything related to Eddie is simply subpar. Also he is the one who orchestrated the Beats deal.
Watch: Everyone panned it, huge outlay in R&D and advertising.
New MacBook: Single connection, dumping MagSafe.
Beats: Once again, panned by many, new hardware line, Dre and Iovine.
Apple Music: Huge outlay in cash, infrastructure and content deals into a market with established players.
Sapphire Glass: Big chunk of cash to trust in another company to come through with the product.
China: Yeah, no risk with all the " quirks" of dealing with Communist China.
Warner/Atari also went well...
Somebody needs to put a leash on Eddie Cue. I've no interest in Apple created content.
Entertainment knows no flag. Anyone can create a hit, then for the next 20 years, the same person/company can create a string of losers. If Apple-created content is bad, nobody will watch. If everyone said it was great, would you boycott, or check it out?
It's laughable if you think companies can make a decent profit off of this - and no, Netflix is not making a profit atm b/c they spend almost all of their profit on expansions, while their library has gotten considerably smaller over the years.
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You need to realize that the majority of Apple product users think the iTunes Store works just fine
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The majority of Apple users think iTunes is just fine. Beats makes a decent profit for them and Apple Music is growing really well. It's already the #2 streaming service. The iBooks Store was a Jobs initiative, and it doesn't seem to be doing badly either. Newsstand was also another Jobs initiative that was canned in iOS 9, replaced by Apple News for which we've heard no stats.
I didn't say anything about standing on principle-- simply that I have no interest in it. If it were great, sure I'd be happy. I like good stuff. Since it's all hypothetical right now, I have no interest in what I'm hypothesizing Apple created content will be.
I'm also not interested in what I've seen rumored-- a Dr. Dre "My life is an Apple Ad" show may wind up being much better than the rumors make it sound, but I've no interest in it yet.
I guess I also mean it from the third perspective in that I have no interest in Apple creating content. I don't anticipate it to improve the brand or value of the company, and I don't imagine it enhancing any existing products or enabling others beyond the content and the delivery app.
So, sure, I could be surprised, but at this snapshot in time: I've no interest in Apple created content.