Apple has finally revealed that its streaming service, Apple TV+, will be available in India starting from today. The company has released the streaming service in over 100 countries.
With this, customers who want to experience the Apple TV+ can subscribe for Rs 99 per month. Interestingly, the company is offering a free seven-day trial for those who want to try out the service before opting for a subscription. To recall, the streaming service was announced in March this year and the Cupertino-based giant revealed the price and launch date during its iPhone launch.
The company has already revealed key details of the upcoming series. To start with, the Apple TV+ subscription can be used by up to six people in a family sharing group. Apple’s TV+ streaming service will be initially limited to iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and iPod touch. Apple has revealed that the service will later be pushed to Mac computers running on macOS Catalina, select Samsung smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV devices, LG, Roku, Sony and VIZIO streaming boxes.
One can also watch the content on the web using tv.apple.com website. To subscribe to Apple TV+, customers must update to iOS 12.3 or later, tvOS 12.3 or later and macOS Catalina. The company has revealed that users will get 1 year of free Apple TV+ subscription on the purchase of new Apple iPhone, MacBook and iPads.
The company has also revealed the list of shows that will be available on Apple TV+. The list includes ‘See’ featuring Jason Momoa, ‘The Morning Show’ featuring Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston and other new shows including Dickinson, For All Mankind, Helpsters, Snoopy in Space, Ghostwriter, The Elephant Queen and a new Oprah Winfrey project.
With this, Apple TV+ is all set to give a stiff competition to Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos. As for the pricing is concerned, the Apple TV+ has an advantage over the other two streaming players. The streaming service cost just Rs 99 per month, which is lower as compared to Rs 199 per month plan of Netflix and Rs 129 per month plan for Amazon Prime.
The basic plan from Netflix offers to stream only on a mobile device, while Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Videos offers to stream on different devices including TVs. However, coming to the India-centric shows and content, both the Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos has a variety of content both in Hindi and regional language. This feature is currently missing from the Apple TV+ service. Furthermore, with Amazon Prime Video you also get the whole Amazon Prime subscription, which includes Prime Music and free shipping on Amazon e-commerce site. It is also important to note that the Apple TV+ is only available on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and iPod touch. There is no information on whether it will be available on the Android platform. This is where the streaming service lacks behind as both Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos can be accessed on both Android and iOS platform.
So, it is too early to believe that Apple TV+ will eat up the market share of Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos as the former does not have a wide range of content in different genres. Furthermore, it is currently not known whether the company will introduce India-centric streaming content on its platform or not. However, things could change in the future when Apple will start adding more content to its service. But till then, Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos offers a better library than Apple TV+.