Apple Stock Hits New High On Reported Plan To Bundle Services Like TV, Music, Cloud And Arcade

Dade Hayes
·3 min read

Apple’s high-flying stock lifted the company near a market value of $2 trillion after a report that the company will introduce bundles of its TV, music, videogame, iCloud and other services.

Shares in the tech giant gained 2% in mid-day trading to surpass $461, setting a new high of $464.14.

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The company could start offering the bundles, known to employees as “Apple One,” in October when it starts selling a new line of iPhones, Bloomberg News reported. Pricing and tiers have not been determined. An Apple rep declined to comment on the report, which cited unidentified company sources, when contacted by Deadline.

Bundling could be a boon to the fortunes of Apple TV+, the streaming video service introduced last November. The company has offered a free year of the $5-a-month offering to anyone buying an Apple device, but that promotional window will be closing soon. After a less-than-optimal launch, when The Morning Show and other initial programming drew mixed reviews and were overshadowed by Disney+, Apple has seen its streaming fortunes improve markedly.

Along with 18 Emmy nominations for The Morning Show and other titles, Apple has earned critical praise in 2020 for animated series Central Park, documentary Beastie Boys Story and anthology Little America. Armed with $245 billion in cash on its balance sheet, it has also shaken up the movie business with a string of aggressive moves. It bought Tom Hanks World War II film Greyhound from Sony and landed Martin Scorsese-Leonardo DiCaprio re-teaming Killers of the Flower Moon and Antoine Fuqua’s action drama Emancipation, which stars Will Smith.

Apple has not yet released any viewership or subscriber data for Apple TV+.

Even before COVID-19, services had become a strategic focus for Apple as the tech giant shifts away from hardware, which has more economic sensitivity and less reliable profit margins. After more than a decade as a standard-bearer, the iPhone posted sales declines for the first time in 2018, though they have since stabilized. In the services division, gross margins topped 67% in the quarter ending June 30, with total revenue of $13.2 billion. Apple now has 550 million paying subscribers to its various services, well within reach of its goal of 600 million by the end of 2020.

Apple Music has been an anchor of the services effort, along with iCloud and Apple TV. The company has more recently added Arcade and News+ to go along with Apple TV+.

The Bloomberg report also said the company is looking to launch an online subscription service for fitness classes, which would give it a chance to head off Peloton and Nike in the booming space. Peloton reached 1 million online subscribers in May, while Nike reported adding 25 million new members in the fourth quarter.

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