(Credit: Apple)
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Don't expect an ad-supported Apple TV tier any time soon.
"I don't want to say no forever, but there are no plans." Apple’s head of services, Eddy Cue, told Screen International. “If we can stay aggressive with our pricing, it’s better for consumers not to get interrupted with ads."
Apple TV got a price hike in August, with the monthly cost jumping from $9.99 to $12.99 per month. The streaming service launched in 2019 for a mere $4.99 per month, but has since seen its price increase to $6.99 in 2022, $9.99 in 2023, and now $12.99.
Apple is now the only major streaming service without an ad-supported tier. Rivals like HBO Max, Netflix, and Prime Video have all adopted the strategy to entice customers with lower subscription prices (and make money from advertisers).
Cue also said Apple is unlikely to bid for Warner Bros. Discovery or any other creative studios. "We don't do a lot of major acquisitions," he said, and those that it does do are unrelated to Apple TV. "So, I don’t see that happening because we like what we’re doing. We’re building, and we’ll continue building from that.”
Earlier this month, Apple renamed Apple TV by removing the plus symbol from its name. Cue told Screen International, "We have services like iCloud and Apple News that have a plus. But the reason they do is because they have a free service that’s permanent, so you can get Apple News for free, and then there’s a plus version that offers more content, like The Wall Street Journal and other things.”
For consistency, Apple originally decided to add the plus for its streaming service, but "a lot of us called it Apple TV, and we thought with all the content and everything that we’ve got, let’s just call it what we’ve always called it.”