DirecTV Now Misplaced 267Okay Subscribers Final Quarter, Partly As a result of Finish of Apple TV Supply
In AT&T’s fourth quarter earnings report, the corporate attributed this loss to the closure of a number of low cost bundles that had been closely featured on the service’s web site, and shared on-line. This consists of the favored Apple TV bundle (which expired in June 2018) and some Roku offers.
The corporate attributed the decline to the tip of promotional bundle pricing, which typically noticed the service priced as little as $10 per thirty days for an introductory interval. It had additionally provided machine giveaways – like Roku streaming sticks or Apple TV containers – to encourage sign-ups.
AT&T says its “discounted introductory presents ended,” which resulted within the dramatic loss.
At its peak, the DirecTV Now deal for Apple TV required you to prepay for 3 months of the streaming TV service for about $105. As soon as you probably did this, AT&T would ship you a 32GB Apple TV 4K for free of charge. In essence, prospects had been paying $105 for a 32GB Apple TV 4K, down from round $170, and getting three months to check out DirecTV Now as a bonus.
After all, you possibly can nonetheless cancel DirecTV Now earlier than these three months ended and never pay to proceed utilizing the service, and it seems that’s what many individuals did final yr. Though DirecTV Now has a big channel lineup, it additionally has quite a few issues with its service, which additionally probably led to subscriber churn famous on this week’s earnings report. This features a barebones cloud DVR with low storage and unreliable recordings, numerous efficiency points, outages, and extra.
AT&T additionally raised the worth of DirecTV Now final summer season, growing each tier by $5/month to remain “in step with the market.” This elevated DirecTV Now’s “Stay a Little” plan from $35/month to $40/month, matching rival providers like Hulu with Stay TV, which begins at $40/month, and YouTube TV, which additionally raised to $40/month to compete with Hulu.
Though many had been hoping that the Apple TV provide would return within the fall of 2018 because it did years prior, AT&T by no means resurfaced the deal.
