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Why is Apple TV+ not popular?

G

ghanwani

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Dec 8, 2008
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deadline.com

Of Apple Customers Eligible For Apple TV+, Fewer Than 10% Have Signed Up – Analyst

Fewer than 10% of Apple device owners eligible for a one-year-free offer for Apple TV+ have signed up, a Bernstein Research analyst says.
deadline.com deadline.com

Scenario 1: Apple hasn’t succeeded in its promotion of the service, as it juggles it with marketing a range of other new services and devices.
Scenario 2: Apple may be “conservatively estimating its ‘take rate’ or deliberately scaling its promotions of TV+ slowly to mitigate the negative accounting impact of its early ramp,” the analyst wrote.
Scenario 3: Apple TV+ is simply “failing to resonate with customers, perhaps due to its limited content offerings.”
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What do you think? I think Amazon Prime folks are already getting their entertainment from there along with their other perks. And many others have Netflix. They are late to the game and they don't have anything that is a must see.
 
The market is saturated, the content is good but not amazing, but most of all - and this is unusual for Apple - the marketing is bad.

There are like 4 different things called Apple TV, and Apple TV+ appears within the Apple TV app, most casual users probably don't even understand what they would be paying for.
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ErikGrim said:
Uh. 10% of 1.5bn devices is 150 million signups. Why is he comparing it unfavourably to 10m for D+ and 167m for Netflix worldwide?
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1.5B is the installed base. Only devices bought since, IIRC October of last year, are eligible. They didn't provide that number.
 
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You are conflating the numbers to come up with 150 million signups. There are not close to 150 million signups. Off the top of my head, I have five Apple devices (not counting Macs) in my house. We have one Apple TV + subscription.

ErikGrim said:
Uh. 10% of 1.5bn devices is 150 million signups. Why is he comparing it unfavourably to 10m for D+ and 167m for Netflix worldwide?
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decisions said:
There are like 4 different things called Apple TV, and Apple TV+ appears within the Apple TV app, most casual users probably don't even understand what they would be paying for.
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This!

And the fact that the Apple TV+ service in the Apple TV app on my Apple TV sucks. (see what I did there) I see a series and think: oh that looks cool, and then it's from some other service than Apple TV+ and when I want to find all Apple TV+ shows I need to look around in the menu's for a "feature" that lists them all. It's a confusing experience.
 
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No apps for popular devices like Android TV's or phones (come on guys my expensive Sony Oled has no app?), no chromecast, bad marketing with confusing names (TV...TV+), just a few contents mixed with non-included-in-TV+ contents. Netflix is unbeatable right now.
 
I think at this point the list of programs is very small and most not designed for the average streaming user. Season 1 and there is no past yet to go back and watch.
I think the quality of shows is good but not that entertaining
 
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BlankStar said:
This!

And the fact that the Apple TV+ service in the Apple TV app on my Apple TV sucks. (see what I did there) I see a series and think: oh that looks cool, and then it's from some other service than Apple TV+ and when I want to find all Apple TV+ shows I need to look around in the menu's for a "feature" that lists them all. It's a confusing experience.
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I cancelled my free 1 year sub after a month and hid/deleted the Apple TV Apps because the user experience around what’s chargeable vs what’s free wasn’t clear. Either the UI was badly designed by accident, or it was deliberately done to fool people into incurring extra charges. Either way, I didn’t feel I could trust it.
 
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Arran said:
I cancelled my free 1 year sub after a month and hid/deleted the Apple TV Apps because the user experience around what’s chargeable vs what’s free wasn’t clear. Either the UI was badly designed by accident, or it was deliberately done to fool people into incurring extra charges. Either way, I didn’t feel I could trust it.
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100% agree. It advertises something, you think its part of Apple TV+, click in to it, buy or rent.

If I want to buy or rent, I'll go to the store to do so. If I want to stream some TV shows on a platform I'm subscribed to (which is what I assumed Apple TV+ was), I'll go to that platform. This blends the two in a very sub standard way.

I also very much dislike the fact that other apps (UK based, so iPlayer and ITV hub etc) are integrated even though I've tried to block them showing up as it does an awful job of displaying content from those apps that is relevant, so I'd rather its done separately.

Its such a poor, fragmented experience and one I will not be paying for after the year is up.
 
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I get what they're trying to do, but they should keep the line clear between content you can watch and content you'll need to subscribe/buy/rent. For me they should remove all stuff from the main page I can't watch, but include it when I do a manual search for something, yet include it in the search results next to the title or something.
 
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I don’t think there is enough content on there at the moment. I think within a year it will get better as more content is added. What is there now is good, there just isn’t a lot.
 
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BlankStar said:
I get what they're trying to do, but they should keep the line clear between content you can watch and content you'll need to subscribe/buy/rent. For me they should remove all stuff from the main page I can't watch, but include it when I do a manual search for something, yet include it in the search results next to the title or something.
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But that’s the whole point of it for Apple. They’re a Store first. Selling 3rd party content is the reason for tv app and atv+.

They’ve lost sight of the fact that consumer experience is what got them there. It’s been downhill since the services event. The clown that wrote this article wants Apple to be even more aggressive with ads.

I never use tv app on Apple TV. It’s garbage.
 
I doubt their report's accuracy.
  • The number of eligible customers, or those who purchased Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, or Mac since September 2019, would be between 100 and 200 million (number of iPhones sold in the period is around 100 million or less).
  • Some of the eligible customers bought multiple eligible devices and some live in the same household. Only 1 free Apple TV+ activation per household. I peg the number of eligible customers closer to 100 million, and 150 million at the most.
  • Many of the eligible customers do not speak English, which makes current Apple TV+ library far less appealing to them.
  • WSJ estimates 33.6 million Apple TV+ subscribers. Some of these subscribers are a paid customers, but I think most are enjoying their free 1-year subscription.
  • So between 20-33% of the customers probably activated free Apple TV+ subscription.
Bigger question is, is 33.6 million good or bad? On one hand, the number is a good deal higher than Disney+ (by almost 10 million). On the other hand, most are free subscribers and I suspect a good percentage will not pay to renew their subscription (I would be shocked if 25% or higher renews).

So what does Apple need to do in the mean time?
  • Add more contents to make the service worth $4.99/month ($49.99/year) -- whether it be originals, partnership, or acquisition.
  • For non eligible customers, throw some bones. Offer cheaper introductory paid subscription (e.g, $2.99/month or $29.99/year).
  • Add more foreign language contents, although not at the expense of English.
  • Make Apple TV+ more stand out and easier to access on the Apple TV app.
  • Bundle with other Apple subscription services (e.g., get $15/month worth of Apple subscriptions, get Apple TV+ free).
  • Be more aggressive at migrating Apple TV app to other platforms (e.g., Chromecast, Playstation, Xbox, older smart TVs).
 
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Others said this above, but to reiterate:

1. The app is confusing and there is no clear way to browse just ATV+ content. This inherently makes ATV+ seem less valuable. I understand Apple's vision is to unify all services into a single app, but they haven't done a good job of that yet. Until then, they would be better off having a seperate ATV+ app.

2. The free trial isn't that inviting. It's an email, you have to manually activate the subscription, and there is no rush to do so. After that email falls off the bottom of people's inboxes, they probably forget all about it. Instead Apple should just give all eligible account holders the year free automatically, and hope they actively re-subscribe after the year is up. At least that way some of them might stumble into some ATV+ content and enjoy it.
 
mallbritton said:
Yes! Scroll down to the Channels section and select the TV+ icon. It's really not that difficult.
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Just how Amazon has done it...I never saw that being hard either. But trying to figure out how many menus down your watchlist is on Netflix? now that's hard!

Also, for those getting the "buy/rent" screen when it should be part of an app you use (i.e., Hulu, Amazon, etc) or part of ATV+, try clicking on "Open With" below the price. Often it gives you the option to watch on ATV+ or Watch on Hulu, or whatever. I had that happen with some of the Nick Hits stuff--wouldn't show the show I desired on the channel itself, but searching and found it, shows buy or rent episode, but open with gives me Nick Hits and away I go. This same thing happens as well on Amazon Prime, only it's called "More Ways To Watch"
 
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