Apple to agree a $30 iTunes Subscription Service

6th November, 2009 by Adina
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The whole TV market could be disturbed by the peculiar idea of Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, who intends to give users a much broader access, something like conventional TV. This service should not be limited to a single device. A $30 monthly fee is the proposed cost for this service, but the exact terms of the deal are not made public yet. The new service will, of course, generate a lot of disputes. It’s already imaginable that traditional satellite and cable providers could lose a part of their customers because the TV packages they are offering to Internet-only users are under menace. Some of these providers tried to offer Internet video as an incentive to their customers who agreed to receive online-exclusive video. Others, and this is the case of Time Warner Cable, were under accusations of trying to discourage their customers to use Internet video by putting under test tiered services with low costs instead of their initial offering with unlimited service. Anyway, if this deal will be done, the competition will be sharp.

No reaction yet from movies providers, taken by surprise, but Disney studios could agree to this deal, due to Apple’s CEO Steven Jobs, who is also a member of Walt Disney Company’s Board of Directors.

The TV industry, in particular the online TV, would certainly have a negative reaction. TV viewing has been restricted either to streaming like individual networks’ websites and Hulu, services being usually free of charge, or to per-episode buys – the case of Vudu, iTunes or Zune. Others, like Netflix, provide TV services through subscription streams, but only for a few older productions.


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