Apple on Monday sent out invites for their upcoming media event to be held on Monday, March 25 at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park Campus in Cupertino, California. The event will kickoff at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. Eastern Time).
The invitations feature the tagline “It’s Show Time,” which jibes with the rumors we’ve seen suggesting the event will focus on services instead of hardware. The event is expected to see Apple premiere their much-rumored streaming television and Apple News subscription services.
Apple’s streaming television service, while expected to be previewed at the shindig, is likely to be launched later this year. Apple has over two dozen original shows in the planning or production stages, including series featuring major stars, such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steve Carell, and Jennifer Garner, to name a few. Many of the stars are expected to make an appearance at the event.
The Apple News service is expected to add paid subscriptions to Apple News, offering unlimited access to magazines and paywalled content from news sites, such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal for a $9.99 per month subscription fee.
Apple is said to be negotiating with many of the news sites, with the hangup in negotiations centered mostly around the Cupertino firm’s 50% asking cut of the revenue from the subscription service. While magazines are said to be going along with the deal, news sites that already have subscription plans in place are said to be reluctant to agree to such a deal.
While there have been numerous hardware products rumored to be readying for a spring release, most reports indicate no hardware will make an appearance at the March 25 event. Instead, the much-rumored iPad mini 5, seventh-generation iPad, AirPower, updated AirPods, and a seventh-generation iPod touch could all debut via press releases the same day of the event or soon after.
An announcement posted on the main Apple website and the Events website, The event will be live-streamed the Apple website and through the Events app on the Apple TV.
(Image via TechCrunch‘s Matthew Panzarino)