Apple revealed earlier this fall that its new TV app for Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad would be available in December, and that did indeed happen on Monday via iOS and tvOS updates. The goal of the app is reportedly to provide one place to access programming from a variety of other apps, as well as a content discovery portal.
“The TV app shows you what to watch next and easily discover TV shows and movies from many apps in a single place,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, explains.
Programming info from the likes of HBO Now and Hulu is included in the TV app, but Netflix is notably missing. That has some pundits across the web conjecturing that Netflix’s absence could be because Apple may be planning a launch of a competing streaming service at some point. Others suggest that Netflix’s content advice engine is one of the streaming service’s major perks, and Apple’s content discovery portal could prove to be a competitor in the effort to offer consumers program suggestions even before they know they want them.
We’ll have to wait to see if Netflix remains outside of the TV app, but consumers continue to pressure providers to make their content as seamless to discover as possible, not to mention simple to watch. Even Comcast and Netflix – not always the best of friends – eventually came to an agreement to make things smoother for their mutual customers by incorporating Netflix into X1.
Making content easier to find is a growing issue and one that providers should pay better attention to, according to research. For example, a recently released study from TiVo said viewers from the Millennial and Generation Z groups showed a strong tendency to give up on shows they previously enjoyed when they felt it became too difficult to find and access them.
Zeynep Ahmet, senior advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab, also says that his company’s research indicates that consumers are increasingly asking for seamless access to TV and video content across services and devices. “For consumers in general, and Millennials in particular, being able to watch on the smartphone is key. Consumers not only want the shared, social broadcast TV experience … they also expect the flexibility of an a la carte on-demand media offering. Today’s experience is multifaceted and consumers want to create their own worlds of compelling, personalized content,” Ahmet says.
