Apple losing a cool billion per year on Apple TV Plus

The company’s premium streaming service is not yet profitable, but it’s still important for consumers — here’s why

Apple’s premium entertainment content streaming service, Apple TV Plus, is reportedly costing the company serious money without being nowhere near as successful as it probably should be. Apple has always been about the long game, though. (Image: James Yarema, Unsplash)

Apple’s streaming service, Apple TV Plus, is reportedly incurring annual losses exceeding $1 billion despite amassing approximately 45 million subscribers by 2024. According to The Information, this makes Apple TV Plus the only subscription service offered by the company that fails to generate any profit. Apple has already reduced its content budget from $5 billion annually to $4.5 billion as part of a broader effort to curtail spending, but it still represents quite an expensive investment as — having entered its fifth year — it’s probably nowhere near to where the company hoped it would be in terms of market share.

Despite featuring several popular examples of critically acclaimed original programming, Apple TV Plus accounts for less than 1% of the total US monthly streaming viewership, significantly trailing Netflix which commands 8.2% of that market. Analysts often point out that Apple TV Plus is meant to work as a strategic tool to retain users within the Apple ecosystem — rather than being a profit driver in and of itself — but whether the service is actually successful in that regard too is highly debatable.