Apple plan to launch global TV subscription service

Apple to go head-to-head with Amazon and Netflix in service set to launch next year

Apple's forthcoming product launch, believed to be the unveiling of new Macs and MacBooks, may contain ‘one more thing': a new global subscription TV service.

According to The Information, the company is working on a subscription service that will cover more than 100 countries worldwide, and which would compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The service will launch in the US in the first half of 2019, according to The Information's sources, with an app making it available globally within months after that.

"It will include Apple's original programs free to Apple device owners and also will enable users to sign up for TV network subscriptions owned by other companies, just as Amazon Prime Video subscribers can do through the Amazon Channels feature in the US, UK, Germany and Japan," claimed The Information.

It will include Apple's original programs free to Apple device owners and also will enable users to sign up for TV network subscriptions owned by other companies

In a bid to tie-in existing Apple device owners, shows original to Apple's own network will be free to stream to Apple devices, with the company devoting $1 billion to develop new family friendly shows.

It is not the first time that Apple has been rumoured to be getting into the global TV market, following up the success of its iTunes portal for music.

However, its plan to release an Apple TV were frustrated by media companies who did not want to find themselves marginalised in the same way that the music industry had been, first by online piracy, and then by online stores like iTunes.

It's not clear whether Apple has overcome industry objections, replicated Amazon's model or simply offered more money.

While I was chairman of Channel 4, the myopic regulators at the Competition Commission blocked our Kangaroo venture with the BBC and ITV

It does, though, indicate the way in which entertainment is rapidly becoming globalised - with the US leading the way, and the UK being a bit-part player.

Back in 2009, the-then Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson had suggested that Channel 4, the BBC and ITV collaborate on a global online subscription television service, pooling their collective content and selling it directly as a subscription or on-demand service.

However, that idea was quashed by the Competition Commission. "It was a tragedy for Britain's creative industries that in 2009, while I was chairman of Channel 4, the myopic regulators at the Competition Commission blocked our Kangaroo venture with the BBC and ITV," wrote Johnson in a column in The Sunday Times last year.

He continued: "It would have been a pioneering video-on- demand service and a national champion to do battle with the likes of Netflix. Instead, it was shot down by small-minded bureaucrats who were heavily lobbied by our competitors."

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