It seems that Apple is officially ready to do business in Hollywood.
They told the content makers that they want to spend an astonishing amount of $1 billion during the following year on their own things. That is exactly what the studios wanted to hear, as they’ve been expecting this to happen for quite some time now, especially after June when two top Sony TV executives were hired by Apple.
However, it remains unknown what are Apple’s plans for that content. The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple wants to make up to 10 House of Cards or Game of Thrones-scale shows, although that is far from enough to start a full subscription service.
Just to get into context: Netflix is spending about $6 billion on content, while last year HBO spent around $2 billion. Now Apple is officially in the contest for content with them, but for sure it doesn’t want to defeat them. Apple intends to offer the streaming of their shows by Apple devices and to sell their services on its iTunes store so that they could take their fee on a monthly basis.
However, this is not an official announcement by Apple, but it could be an indicator that they are finished with their first hesitant try to make their own programming used to expand the Apple Music service. In practice, one wouldn’t hire those people and spend that amount of money as a marketing drill.
The companies that are writing checks to Hollywood now cover Netflix, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google, while AT&T and Verizon are in line as well. We know that Cupertino-based tech giant has a lot of money to burn and it could prove as a great investment and a way to further increase their influence in multiple industries.
