Apple has endured years of trouble trying to launch a subscription TV service to rival cable, and now it looks like more of the same as it will reportedly delay launching a new live TV service until 2016.
That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg Thursday afternoon, citing people familiar with Apple’s plans.
The new service was to be part of a subscription service Apple hoped to launch alongside a new Apple TV streaming device. If the Bloomberg report is true, Apple may launch a new Apple TV alone at the event next month.
From VentureBeat
Bloomberg’s sources said that Apple is still slogging through slow-moving negotiations with TV content rights holders like the networks and Viacom. The sources said Apple also doesn’t have the network infrastructure in place to ensure the end-to-end delivery of high-quality video.
Apple reportedly wants to deliver a TV content package for about $40 per month, roughly half of what most people pay for cable. The rights holders are responsible for the high cable prices after pressuring cable companies to pay more and more as contracts renewed. Why rights holders would give Apple a special deal is unclear.
For their part, TV industry executives are deathly afraid that Apple will do to the video business what it did to the music business. The music industry’s acquiescence to the 99 cents-per-song paradigm is seen as one of the central causes, if not the main cause, of the rapid decline of the music business in the late 1990s and 2000s.
There are other more immediate problems. One of the content owners Apple is reportedly negotiating with is NBC, which is part of Comcast. A competitive Apple TV service would be a direct competitor to Comcast’s video service.
These are not new problems. The atmosphere for a favorable Apple content deal is no less toxic than it was five years ago. If anything, content may be even harder to come by now that Internet video services are seen as a viable threat to cable. More competition for content pushes prices up, not down.
Apple wants to control the living room, and grow a powerful ecosystem of apps and content centered on the Apple TV box in the living room. But as in all Apple ecosystems, the content is key.
More information:
Powered by VBProfiles
VB’s research team is studying web-personalization…
Chime in here, and we’ll share the results.
Apple will reportedly delay launching a live TV service until 2016
from VentureBeat » Social Media Companies | Social Network News | VentureBeat http://ift.tt/1MmZHYw
via
No comments:
Post a Comment