Apple Inc. raised prices of its TV+, Arcade gaming and News+ subscriptions on Wednesday, following similar moves by other content providers, as the iPhone maker looks to generate more revenue from services.<\/p>\n
The company increased the cost of its TV+ streaming service to $9.99 from $6.99 a month in the US.<\/p>\n
Arcade climbed to $6.99 from $4.99, and News went to $12.99 from $9.99.<\/p>\n
The changes apply to the US and some international markets. [Editor’s note: At the time of publication, the price changes did not seem to impact South Africa.]<\/p>\n
The TV+ price increase is only the second in its four-year history. It was originally offered at $4.99 when it launched in 2019.<\/p>\n
The annual price of TV+ is moving to $99 from $69.<\/p>\n
Currently some people get TV+ for free through deals with mobile phone carriers, such as T-Mobile USA Inc.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince launching four years ago, Apple TV+ has made history for streaming services by crossing major milestones in a short span of time, thanks to its extensive selection of award-winning and broadly acclaimed series, feature films, documentaries, and kids and family entertainment,\u201d Apple said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Apple, which gets about 20% of revenue from its services division, is aiming to become a go-to hub for streaming content.<\/p>\n
The company is\u00a0redesigning its TV app<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to consolidate its various video offerings later this year, Bloomberg has reported.<\/p>\n The app aggregates content from iTunes, the TV+ service, live sports networks and third-party offerings like Amazon Prime.<\/p>\n Apple is aiming to steer more customers toward the TV app, which sits at the center of its expanding video strategy.<\/p>\n The changes follow moves by Netflix Inc. and others to raise prices for their subscription services.<\/p>\n Companies such as Netflix,\u00a0Amazon.com Inc<\/strong>.<\/a>\u00a0and Disney have also introduced tiered ad-supported offerings.<\/p>\n Apple remains the sole major streaming platform not to have the interruptions. It\u2019s also still the least-expensive among the major providers.<\/p>\n Over the past several months, Apple TV+ has expanded its content selection, which includes big-budget movies like the just-released\u00a0Killers of the Flower Moon<\/em>\u00a0from director Martin Scorsese.<\/p>\n The company has also widened the selection of games in\u00a0Apple Arcade<\/a><\/strong>, which offers subscribers access to more than 200 titles that can be played on the iPhone or iPad, in addition to Mac computers and Apple TV.<\/p>\n News+ offers a library of more than 450 publications as well as narrated audio articles.<\/p>\n As a result of the individual plan increases, the Apple One services bundle is also going up.<\/p>\n The basic plan, which includes Music, TV+, Arcade and 50 gigabytes of iCloud storage is now $19.95, up from $16.95.<\/p>\n The Family plan jumped up by $3 to $25.95 and a Premier plan that adds News+ and Fitness+ is now $37.95, up from $32.95.<\/p>\n The price of Apple Music is staying steady at $10.99 a month, after getting a $1 boost about a year ago.<\/p>\n The price hikes on Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+ impact the US and some other international markets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":469513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49317],"tags":[605,60285,32788,2638,90294],"class_list":["post-512656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-apple","tag-apple-arcade","tag-apple-news","tag-apple-tv","tag-subscription-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Netflix hiking Premium and Basic prices in three countries<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"