Apple TV+ has recently increased their prices, and CEO Tim Cook accredits the price hike to the service’s hit television shows. The price increase is considered “obvious” given how much Apple TV+ has grown over the years, according to Deadline.
During a call with Deadline after Apple’s quarterly earnings, Tim Cook explained that “if you look at when we first priced it, we only had very few shows. We were at the beginning. We were very focused on originals only, and so we had four or five shows and priced it quite low.” Apple TV+ now has a lot of content and “are coming out with more each and every month. And so [they] increased the price to represent the value of the service,” via Deadline.
According to Deadline, the monthly price of Apple TV+ will increase to $6.99 from its original price at $4.99, and its yearly subscription will increase to $69.99 from its original price at $49.99. Cook credited the increased “enthusiasm and customer engagement” on Apple TV+ hit television shows such as Severance; drama series that focuses on Mark as he leads team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives, Bad Sisters; series that follows the Garvey sisters, who are bound together by the death of their parents and a promise to always protect each other, and Black Bird; drama series following Jimmy Keene who is sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison but cuts a deal with the FBI to befriend a suspected serial killer, via Deadline.
Cook also noted that the success of Apple TV+ original series Ted Lasso, a comedy series following an American college football coach as he heads to London to manage struggling English Premier League football team, and its Emmy wins have had an effect on the price increase, according to Deadline.