Happy Wednesday.

We will take a breather from earnings to cover some Apple news and two stories that sparked my interest. The update kicks off with Neil’s thoughts on Apple raising prices for Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+. We then turn to criticism being thrown at Apple’s environmental efforts. The update concludes with a look at GM pulling back on its EV sales targets.

Apple Raises Prices for TV+, Arcade, and News+

Earlier today, Apple raised prices for three of its content distribution services:

Apple TV+: $10 per month (was $7)
Apple Arcade: $7 per month (was $5)
Apple News+: $13 per month (was $10)

Apple Bundle One prices went up accordingly so that roughly the same percentage of savings remained. Consumers will now see a big $27/month savings with Premier.

Some thoughts:

These are aggressive price hikes for Apple, partially driven by having never increased Apple Arcade or Apple News+ prices.
The Apple TV+ price increase follows a $2/month increase last October. Apple has now doubled Apple TV+ pricing in 12 months. It’s fair to assume some of this is due to Apple believing that they could raise the price (sub figures are likely doing fine). In addition, Apple’s content budget continues to increase both due to doing more and cost inflation. We don’t see a Netflix-like leveling of content spend from Apple. While Apple doesn’t need to turn a profit with Apple TV+, they don’t want it to turn into a financial drain either. All-in-all, consumers will likely be OK with this increase given the growing amount of content found on the service. Also, this is being done ahead of what will be a handful of blockbuster films with a ton of buzz becoming available on TV+. Those films alone would be worth $100+ in movie ticket dollars to the average family. In addition, the higher and quicker Apple TV+ pricing goes, the more likely Apple will launch a lower-priced ad-supported tier.

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