Comment by compounding_it
25 days ago
apple probably was losing money on the old Apple TV with old 4gb ram and 64gb storage in low volumes anyway and they probably would have to pay even more going forward. the upgrade seems to make sense from supply chain standpoint to standardise storage and chips across devices.
If anything apple is probably bring value to new buyers of Apple TV in this market. At 299$ you are getting hardware that will last quite some time as opposed to a 200$ device that might cost maybe 250$ in six months and give you lot less hardware capabilities.
Apples services division broke records for revenue so there’s a way to look at the TV hardware as a kind of loss leader for subscriptions
But everything is way more expensive than it was a year ago. Nothing escapes this inflation we are going through
Apple's service division breakdown does not paint AppleTV+ in a favorable light whatsoever: https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/apple-tv-plus-streamin...
If they're selling AppleTV at a loss to stimulate AppleTV+ subscriptions, then they're hemorrhaging money on two fronts. Without their App Store monopoly, Apple's annual service revenue would undoubtedly be a crater.
Yes AppleTV+ is actually a major financial problem for Apple.
The strategy Netflix and Prime applied was that they just loaded it with average-costing in-house content and then a few were hits. With Apple they seem to be spending a lot on individual shows and their library is still small compared to others. I guess they can't really do anything average according to their philosophy. This is unfortunately not working in their favor with TV+.