Apple has launched a new website. Snapshot is scrolling ticker of musicians, actors and sports stars that gives you fast access to their latest content on Apple TV, iTunes and Podcasts.
While Apple TV+ does boast some very successful shows, like The Morning Show and its latest big hit Severance, viewership numbers are far behind those of its rivals. Severance might be Apple’s most-watched show, having overtaken Ted Lasso, but it has a long way to go before it catches Prime, Netflix, Disney and the growing raft of competitors.
According to Nielsen, the company that compiles statistics about what people watch and listen to, Prime’s series Reacher (a ripping show if you like action movies) had 6.6B viewing minutes in March 2025. Severance squeezed into the top ten streamed shows for the month with 3.3B viewing minutes for the month.
While that’s just one data point, it tells us that Apple’s footprint is smaller. Indeed, it has a global audience of around 25M paying subscribers. Netflix and Prime have about ten times as many subscribers while Disney+ has around six times more.
Apple’s earning reports tell us that Services is the company’s fastest growing revenue source (although the iPhone remains its largest revenue raiser). Apple has invested around USD$20B in content production since Apple TV+ launched in November 2019.
That brings us back to Snapshot. Apple will be trying to drive up subscriber numbers and one way to do this is to highlight popular artists, actors and athletes that will attract new paying subscribers. Winning awards and popular acclaim is helping, as are the free and discounted subscriptions Apple offers to buyers of Apple products. One source claims that Apple TV+’s 25M subscribers are bolstered by a further 50M that have “promotional access”.
Will Snapshot makes any difference to subscriber and viewer numbers? It’s hard to tell. But Apple has sunk so much time and money into Apple TV+ that it’s hard to see them pull the pin. It continues to create series that are quite different to Netflix’s algorithm-powered cookie-cutter movie-making machine.
It would seem that Apple’s strategy is not to be the biggest or most popular streaming service. It is focussing on building a profitable niche audience that will slowly grow. As someone who’s been following Apple’s fortunes for many years, it’s not unlike the Mac strategy.
The focus is on building a profitable line of products that appeals to a particular audience who are will to pay for a creator that can ‘think different’ to the rest of the market.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.