Analysis on Apple TV+: Future Development Direction of Streaming Media Platform

. Streaming media had been a popular form of entertainment since 2019 due to COVID-19. Netflix, Home Box Office, and other streaming media offer an abundance of media resources to all kinds of audiences. Notwithstanding that streaming media had been flourishing, they still had trouble constructing sustainable profitability. Apple TV+, being one of the streaming media corporations, found out a way to achieve sustainable profitability. The platform also benefited from the flourishing of the streaming media industry. In order to promote the sustainable development of the streaming media industry, the article is mainly about Apple TV+ achieving sustainable profitability by adapting short and quality streaming media products and making proper use of the parent Company Apple Inc’s financial support. SWOT analysis will be used to make a further explanation. The advice is offered in the article to expose the revelation of future development for both Apple TV+ and the industry, which is to combine franchises with short series and make use of co-branding to enlarge its media resources. Additionally, the research also reveals the weakness of Apple TV+ that Apple TV+ has difficulty in retaining loyal customers due to the lack of rich and attractive streaming media resources.


Introduction
With the development of technology and media communication, the audience can enjoy TV series and other media resources in different ways.The new form of media and developing communication channels captured the most of audience's attraction [1].Netflix, being one of the greatest streaming media companies in the industry, is one of the driving forces behind this shift.Netflix, whose entrance into the TV creation realm brought a vital change to traditional media, first raised the concept of web TV [2].
Another corporation, Apple TV+, was also a vital force to promote the shift of traditional media.Barr introduced in his research that the second type of Apple TV made it accessible for the audience to watch Netflix's movies in the box, which dealt with the technical issue of web TV * Corresponding Author: Yuyang.Shen2102@student.xjtlu.edu.cn[3].Based on the harness of technology from Apple TV and plentiful original creation from Netflix, streaming media has become a major entertainment these days.More and more streaming media companies such as Hulu, and YouTube.Even traditional media started to construct their streaming media platform such as Paramount+ and Disney+.
According to Nielsen's report of viewing rates among the greatest streaming media platform, Netflix's original creation Ginny&Georgia, a TV series of 20 episodes, occupied the first place of the most viewed series during the week of January 16 to 22, 2023 [4].Netflix also occupied the first six positions on the list, followed by HBO's original The last of us and Paramount's original Criminal Minds.Although Apple TV+ 's series seemed not to be as popular as their competitor's series in the latest report, they are still unignorable forces in the industry.Adorno cited in his report that Apple TV+ has gained the second highest place in IMdb's streaming media point although its platform has fewer media resources than other bigger platforms [5].
Based on Apple TV+'s situation, the research will make a prediction and reflective suggestion on the future development of streaming media.the research will first make an introduction to Apple TV+ such as product type, business scope, business scale, target customers, and market position of the enterprise.Secondly, the research will analyze the advantage and disadvantages of Apple TV+'s marketing strategy by SWOT model and afterward offer 3 persuasive suggestions for Apple TV+.Finally, based on the analysis, the prediction of the streaming media will be made.The first original streaming media production of Apple TV+ was <Dickingson> first displayed at Tribeca TV Festival [6].The excellent products were stably produced after 2019.For instance, Severance, Shining Girls, and Defending Jacob received plenty of good comments.

Basic information
Based on the products above, it is obvious to find out the strategy of Apple TV+, which is to produce short but highquality series.Additionally, Apple TV+ offered a lower price for customers only if the Apple TV+ could be sold with Apple TV set-top box at the same time.Nevertheless, it greatly narrows the customer initially because few of the customers would be pleased to buy an expensive set-top box in order to be accessible to a streaming media platform which was lack media resources.Due to the production strategy, the Apple TV+ platform is lack popular original IP and media resources produced by other streaming media platforms.

SWOT analysis of Apple TV+ strategy 3.1 Strength
The powerful financial support from its parent company, Apple Inc, empowered them to promote this attractive marketing campaign.On the other hand, powerful financial support also brings Apple TV+ rich resources.Apple TV+ and make sure the audience could have a stable but high-quality experience during the subscription.
The action would also increase the number of long-term subscribers.

Weakness
Apple TV+ has a relatively small content library compared to other streaming media platforms brings a major challenge to the growth and success of the platform.
A study by Deloitte found that the availability of content is the key factor for consumers to subscribe to streaming media services [7].Although Apple TV+ has some highquality original content, its content is not as rich as Netflix, which means that users who are looking for multiple content options may not be able to find the required content on Apple TV+ and may choose to subscribe to other streaming media services.
In addition, due to the lack of a popular franchise partner, Apple TV+ is difficult to retain users for a long time.A franchise partner could be beneficial for a media company to seek data from its audience and specifically guide its next franchise product.Jarrar et al stated in the research that most of Bond's audience base was a male audience who was aged from 25 to 45 [8].The data will be a benchmark to decide the target audience of the platform.Unlike its competitors, Apple TV+ has not been in the market for many years and has not established a huge database of its audience.It is a relatively new streaming media platform in the market, without the same popular original franchise programs and movies.
Retention of users is crucial to the success of any streaming media platform because it will generate recurring revenue and help build a loyal user base.
Without a diversified content library and databases, Apple TV+ may find it difficult to retain long period users, because users may decide to unsubscribe after viewing the available original content.It will drop in a negative circle without a buttress from databases and long-period subscribers.Sustainable profitability will be seriously influenced.

Opportunity
Apple TV+, as a streaming media department set up by Apple, shares the same customer group with its parent company.Tien mentioned in his research that Apple Inc's distribution channel decided that most of its customers will mainly be people aged 22-45 who have a higher consuming capacity in various areas such as Asia, America [9] will preclude Apple TV+ from being an independent streaming service platform.Paramount+, Disney+, and HBO+ have long been successful media corporations in both the Movie and TV series industry, which will be easier than Apple TV+ to find a streaming media platform.
In the case of fierce competition for streaming media market share, Apple TV is not familiar with the business operation mode, which easily leads to its failure to quickly integrate into the market and obtain a high exposure rate.

Suggestions
Based on the SWOT analysis above, suggestions will mainly focus on dealing with Apple TV+'s threat of saturated market share and the weakness of retaining loyal subscribers.
In the first place, Apple TV+ should insist on its producing strategy, that is to produce short and qualitative TV series.Producing strategy would keep the platform being in possession of a healthy and sustainable development.Faced with such fierce competition, Apple TV+ should stand on long-term development rather than short-term development.Netflix is known for launching several low-quality series and high-quality series in a year.
Most of its streaming media sometimes have awful feedback.Although the strategy might increase the exposure rate to a certain degree, the subscriber will feel unworthy in the next few subscribing periods.However, Apple TV+ should also make a trial to develop the franchise product.Franchise products could increase the identification rate of a streaming media platform.For instance, people will identify Game of Thrones as a symbol of HBO, but few people would identify anything when mentioning Apple TV+.It does not mean Apple TV+ should spend more resources on franchises.
Combined with the short and quality producing, Apple TV+ could also produce the series and media product that fits their production strategy.

Conclusion
To draw a conclusion, being a newcomer in streaming media, although Apple TV+ has made significant achievement since its launch, the fierce and recession Apple TV+ offers streaming media services such as TV series, entertainment, document, and kid education program.At the same time, it also sells smart hardware such as Apple TV 4K, an HDTV set-top box that offers a better viewing experience.The hardware services were initially set up in 2006.It gradually made a supplement to its original streaming media called Apple TV+ in 2019.
Apple TV is positioned as a mid-end to the high-end streaming platform which has both hardware support and original streaming media product.Its positioning is determined by the product that Apple TV offers.As a streaming media platform, Apple TV provides original series, purchases copyright of videos from other platforms, and launches services on this platform.It also provides hardware facilities --Apple TV box compared with other streaming media platforms.Apple TV box starts at 206 dollars, which is higher than other TV hardware products and belongs to the high-end market.An Apple TV+ subscription costs 4.99 dollar per month, which is relatively low compared to other streaming platforms such as Netflix, having a price of subscription of12.99 dollars per week.Beyond that, Apple TV+ 's first-year free program could be attractive to most potential customers.Even Steven Allen Speilberg was hired to work as Apple TV+'s art director.The surprising capital strengthened the foundation of Apple TV+, which minimize the gap between Apple TV+ and other streaming media corporations in the industry.In terms of content positioning and terrific financial support, Apple TV is different from other streaming media platforms in the way of marketing great IP and popular series.The reason why Apple TV+ could gain an excellent comment might reflect the success of their production strategy, which is much different from the main streaming media such as Netflix and HBO.Specifically, Netflix and other main streaming media corporations are fond of creating a few popular and attractive IPs in a year to gain a sharp increase of attention in duration, while offering some tiny but ordinary series for the rest of the time.However, unlike most of the corporations in the streaming media industry, Apple TV+ stick with offering the finest and shortest theory to maintain audience attraction in a stable range, which will not appear as a sharp decrease attraction or a sharp increase attraction.Apple TV is committed to creating short series and marketing them in the way of multiple high-quality short series.The short and excellent series mode can reasonably allocate 2 SHS Web of Conferences 181, 04004 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202418104004ICDEBA 2023 resources and reduce the dependence on a certain popular IP in order to capture the audience's attention.The strategy would balance the output of each series from streaming media market are still affecting Apple TV+'s advantage.Apple TV+ does have advantages such as a low-price subscription mode, a short and quality series strategy, and powerful financial support.They also have disadvantages such as a lack of content richness and experience.Meanwhile, opportunities and threats also exist.The unsolidified streaming media market, fierce competition between platforms, and recession interest from subscribers will be influential to Apple TV+'s future progress.Suggestions for co-branding and developing franchise partners were mentioned in the article to promote Apple TV+'s future progress.Additionally, Apple TV+ could also develop itself as a propaganda platform for its parent company Apple Inc. to increase its brand influence.The suggestions would be beneficial for Apple TV+ to be the future leading platform in the streaming media industry, and it can be also used as a reference for other platforms.However, limitations still exist.Apple TV+ is a dynamic streaming media platform that operational strategy might change based on the dynamic market.Thus, future study is likely to focus on how Apple TV+ conducts a dynamic marketing strategy to deal with the dynamic market.