Apple TV+ is picking up more award nominations. Can it pick up subscribers at the same rate?

Look at all our awards! That was Apple’s key message concerning its Apple TV+ streaming service this month.

The company boasted of 745 million paid subscribers in total, but most of them came via the juggernaut that is the app store, whose third-party developers pay it a chunky (and contentious) cut. Outside big global figures like that, which don’t tell you very much, Apple is parsimonious with numbers. That’s unlikely to change.

However, CNBC last year reported that the company had told the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees that the streamer was at less than 20 million subs in North America in July, making it possible to pay production crews less. That, of course, could mean anything from zero to 19.9 million, so it doesn’t tell us much either. Disney Plus, which remember launched within a couple of weeks of Apple TV+, had approaching 40 million US subscribers at that point, out of a near 100 million global base, which has since expanded to 118 million.

That said, Apple’s streamer appears to have found some momentum of late, such that those crews could be due a pay rise. Antenna, an analytics firm, said it was America’s fastest-growing streamer in the third quarter of last year, accounting for 26 per cent of US streaming growth and attaining a 5 per cent market share across the Atlantic, about half of Disney’s.

That figure still needs some context. Research firm Digital TV Research, per the Hollywood Reporter, projects Disney will hit 284.2 million subs globally by 2026, despite the recent bumps in the road it has experienced. It has Netflix at 270 million. Despite its recent feistiness, Apple TV+ lacks the latter pair’s global reach and, with an estimated 35.6 million, will barely be visible in their rearview mirrors, if those figures prove accurate.

But that could be fine with CEO Tim Cook because Apple is playing a very different game to Disney or Netflix or Amazon, with their expansive libraries and licensed content. While it has dipped its toe into the licensing waters – Gen Xers and Baby Boomers can indulge in some Peanut(s)-flavoured nostalgia with Charlie Brown – its primary focus is original content. High-quality original content.

When it comes to awards season, Apple’s boasting is not idle, with it having clocked up a highly impressive 763 nominations and 190 wins, despite the streamer’s relatively limited output (which is expected to crank up this year).

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations at the end of last week added to their number, handing out 12 nods to Apple properties in total, with Coda and The Tragedy of MacBeth featuring in the motion picture categories and Ted Lasso and The Morning Show gaining multiple nods in the TV equivalents.

Troy Kotsur’s male supporting actor nod for Coda is particularly significant. He’s the first deaf actor to pick up an individual SAG nomination.

Rivals have lately been upping their prices, and finding resistance from consumers grappling with Covid and price inflation. Apple’s strategy is different here too. Unusually for a company that typically charges a premium price for its products and services, the service is cheap at just £5 in the UK, $5 in the US, and €5 in Europe, much cheaper than its rivals.

Apple’s challenge is not so much getting users to pay more, as getting them to pay something. Trial periods with new Apple devices have been long. They’re down to three months from a year at the service’s launch, but that might still be enough time for you to see what you want to see from the service, given its limited slate.

In its favour is the talent it has managed to attract. TheTragedy of MacBeth was directed by Joel Coen in his first solo outing, and pairs Denzel Washington (who netted the SAG nod) with Frances McDormand. The Morning Show stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Plus, there’s Jon Stewart, two Tom Hanks movies, a Stephen King adaptation featuring Julianne Moore. Mahershala Ali picked up a Golden Globe nomination for sci-fi drama Swan Song. There have been misses, including the King adaptation, according to the critics. But that’s OK. When you hook enough A-list talent, you’ll get plenty of hits too.

The lights might even be bright enough to attract subscribers from beyond users of Apple devices. But what about retaining them? That’s the trick.

Ted Lasso, a zeitgeist-capturing gossip around the water cooler hit, has played a big role in hauling the service up by its bootstraps after a very slow start.

Shows with that sort of reach are very hard to find, and they don’t always come from where you might expect. Who would have foreseen Squid Game? Who would have foreseen Lasso on paper? A quirky comedy about a college American Football coach coming across the pond to manage a very different sort of football in the Premiership? On paper it reads “potential disaster”.

But here’s the thing, Apple has the resources to wear whatever losses the service is incurring for as long as it likes without Wall Street getting twitchy. It’s a $1 trillion company after all.

Tim Cook seems minded to give his streamer time, and space, while basking in the publicity and good press it generates, something CEOs very much enjoy doing.

While the industry continues to grow at an impressive clip, at some point the streaming wars will start to claim casualties. Don’t bank on Apple TV+ being among the first wave of them.