While Wall Street bears are betting Apple’s value to investors will decline, two analysts say they have an idea the could “re-energize” Apple. In a lengthy report on Monday, Goldman Sachs analysts Simona Jankowski and Drew Borst proposed the Cupertino tech company create an “Apple Prime” subscription bundle of hardware and software.
The theoretical bundle would cost $50 per month and include an iPhone and an Apple TV, with subscribers getting new hardware when Apple issues updates. […] On the content side, the offering could include the Apple Music service, access to the iTunes library of TV shows and movies (some for free), Apple’s forthcoming original content, and sports, the analysts said.
“We believe the shift to this model would drive increased consumption of hardware (iPhone and Apple TV) on increased customer loyalty, with increased monetization of services and content, and investors would have increased visibility on revenues,” wrote Jankowski and Borst.
While such a bundle could appeal to the growing numbers of “cord cutters” who are looking to drop their cable television subscriptions, and would be attractive to users who are becoming less willing to pay for downloading music and video content, such a move would be expensive for the firm, and would require extensive renegotiation of current content licensing deals.
Apple was long-rumored to have been creating its own streaming video content service, offering a “skinny” bundle of popular television networks, but had trouble getting studios and networks to go along for the ride at an acceptable tariff.
Jankowski and Borst says Apple could partner with Disney to offer content from its popular stable of networks and movie content, but that would likely require them to charge more than $50 for any “Apple Prime” package they would offer containing Disney content. Another approach would be to offer “Apple-Only” exclusives, such as movies and concerts, which would show exclusively via Apple’s service, long before they would appear on other services.
What’s your opinion? Should Apple explore such a service? Would you pay $50 per month for access to video and music content, along with updates to all of your Apple devices when they become available? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments section below.
