Apple has teamed up with Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom company, to expand its music and TV streaming services in India. This move is expected to significantly boost Apple TV+ and Apple Music, giving the tech giant a better chance to compete with popular streaming services like Spotify and Disney+ Hotstar.
Apple, which is looking to grow its revenue from services like apps, payments, and media worldwide, will now offer free music and video streaming to many of Airtel’s 281 million customers. This partnership will help Apple gain more users in a country where its focus has mostly been on manufacturing iPhones and reducing its reliance on China for production.
Although Apple makes many iPhones in India, it only holds a small 6% share of the country’s 690 million smartphones, a modest increase from 2% in 2019, according to Counterpoint Research.
“The partnership shows Apple’s strong ambitions for India,” said Nitesh Kripalani, former head of Amazon Prime Video in India. “It’s a smart strategy that Apple has used before to quickly increase its presence in key markets.”
In the U.S., Apple has given free Apple Music access through Verizon data plans since 2019 and will include Apple TV+ in a Comcast streaming bundle from May. In India, Apple Music will be available to Airtel’s premium Wynk music app users, which will soon shut down. Airtel’s postpaid plans give about 7 million customers access to Wynk’s ad-free version, but only a small number currently use it, according to a telecom industry insider.
Neither Apple nor Airtel provided comments outside of regular business hours.
The Music Streaming Competition
Apple Music is better suited to the Indian market than Apple TV+ as it features Bollywood and regional-language songs, while Apple TV+ mainly has English content. However, Apple Music’s library is still smaller than Spotify’s, said Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint.
In India, Spotify has about 3 million paid users, Gaana has 1.4 million, Wynk has 500,000, and Apple Music has around 200,000, according to a music industry insider.
Overall, only about 7.5 million people in India paid for audio streaming services last year, out of 185 million who used both free and paid apps, according to data from the industry group FICCI and consulting firm EY.
Airtel will pay Apple a per-user fee much lower than the $1.20 monthly fee Apple charges for Apple TV+ and Apple Music in India. This will help Airtel save money on licensing fees as it plans to shut down Wynk and use Apple Music to boost revenue and customer loyalty, said a telecom industry source.
“Airtel realized it is better at distributing content than creating it,” the source said.
The Video Streaming Market
Apple is a small player in India’s video streaming market, with fewer than 1 million users, according to Counterpoint. Disney+ Hotstar leads with 38 million users, while Netflix has around 10 million. Netflix has set a goal to reach 100 million users in India, although it hasn’t provided a timeline.
Apple TV+ is known for original shows like “The Morning Show” and “Slow Horses,” but competitors like Netflix and Disney offer more Hindi content, featuring Bollywood actors and regional-language films. Disney and Reliance Industries’ JioCinema also stream cricket, India’s favorite sport, and are merging their media assets to become the country’s largest entertainment company.
Airtel, which is second only to Reliance Jio in terms of subscribers, plans to offer packages that include several months of free access to Apple TV+, said a telecom source.
While this move will bring Apple TV+ to more Indian homes, its growth could be slow because it isn’t yet fully tailored to the local market, said Shah from Counterpoint.
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