Apple TV+ is reportedly losing $1 billion annually

Apple TV+ is bleeding cash as part of a larger slowdown in Apple’s services sector, per a recent report by Wayne Ma of The Information. The report indicates that Apple TV+ stands alone among Apple’s subscription offerings as the sole unprofitable service. Despite its subscriber base climbing to roughly 45 million last year, the platform continues to rack up annual losses exceeding $1 billion. Since its debut in 2019, Apple has poured over $5 billion annually into content, though that figure dropped by $500 million in 2024 following a cost-cutting directive from CEO Tim Cook and other top brass.
Hartley Charlton for MacRumors:
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Cook apparently raised questions last year about several movie deals with ‌Apple TV‌+ executives, including for the spy action-comedy film “Argylle.” The movie stars Henry Cavill and Dua Lipa, and cost $200 million to produce. Cook reportedly complained that the movie had not found a significant audience or generated more subscribers for ‌Apple TV‌+.
The report explains that “the audience for ‌Apple TV‌+ remains relatively small,” constituting less than 1% of total U.S. streaming service viewing. Netflix and Amazon represented 8.2% and 3.5% of total viewing in February…
Apple’s initial business plan for ‌Apple TV‌+ predicted losses of between $15 billion and $20 billion over its first decade…
The report adds that most users do not sign up directly for Apple’s services, instead opting for an Apple One bundle, which inflates the perceived interest in each service. Many who sign up to ‌Apple One‌ are motivated to subscribe so primarily because of ‌iCloud‌+ rather than other services. Without ‌Apple One‌, ‌Apple Arcade‌ and Apple Fitness+ would not be profitable.

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MacDailyNews Take: Apple TV+ is working. It’s just working slowly. it’s quality over quantity strategy is sound and its library of high-value original content is becoming more substantial every day.
Breakouts hits that permeate the zeitgeist like “Ted Lasso” and “Severance” are doing most of the heavy lifting for getting the word out. Apple could certainly do a better job of promoting the service.
Apple TV+ could lose $1 billion annually until the first Tuesday after Infinity and Apple would be perfectly fine; it wouldn’t even notice.
Last year, Apple Inc. generated average revenue of $1.07 billion per day.

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