Apple Is Bringing iTunes Movies And TV Shows To Samsung Smart TVs
Apple Is Bringing iTunes Movies And TV Shows To Samsung Smart TVs

This photo from Samsung shows the iTunes app running on one of its TVs.

In a surprise announcement, Samsung announced today via press release that Apple is bringing iTunes movie and TV show content to Samsung smart TVs by releasing an iTunes app for 2018 and 2019 Samsung televisions. Prior to this announcement, the only way to watch purchased iTunes content was via an Apple device: Mac, iPhone, iPod, iPad, or Apple TV.

Apple makes the vast majority of its money from iPhone sales. But it wants to have a diverse portfolio of profit centers and in recent years it’s been trying to build one in the form of services. Services is an umbrella category that includes all of Apple’s various subscription products and cloud services. iCloud and Apple Music being a couple of key pieces of its services division. The next big piece of that services picture will undoubtedly be Apple’s own answer to Netflix: an Apple-branded subscription TV service. Apple has made no official announcement about this, but it’s been an open secret for some time now. Apple has already begun producing several original TV shows and signing deals for more.

There’s been a lot of questions about how this would work. Will it be free for Apple Music customers? Or free for owners of Apple devices? Or will it be a separate paid service altogether? Another important question has been whether or not you’ll have to have an Apple device to subscribe to this TV service. While today’s announcement doesn’t address that question officially, it seems to signal that Apple wants to go beyond owners of its own devices to bring in subscribers to this as-yet-unannounced TV service.

What about owners of older Samsung TVs? I have a 2016 4K Samsung TV and I’d love to be able to test this app out on my TV. The Samsung press release specifically mentions that it’s coming to 2018 and 2019 TVs. I fear that means that I won’t be getting this app, though there’s always some hope. I could be wrong, but there doesn’t seem to be any technical reason why this app wouldn’t run on my TV.

AirPlay 2 is also coming to Samsung TVs.

In addition to the iTunes Store app news, the press release also states that Samsung TVs are getting AirPlay 2, Apple’s means of letting Mac and iOS devices stream content to other devices. If you wanted to AirPlay to a TV before, you had to have an Apple TV. Now you’ll be able to go directly to your Samsung television. That’s really nice.

I was a little surprised that Apple Music isn’t also coming to the Samsung smart TV platform. You may not think that makes a lot of sense, but I don’t have any kind of separate stereo any more. If I’m not listening to my AirPods around the house I’m using the Apple Music app on my Apple TV played through my TV’s sound bar with my Samsung TV serving as the “now playing” display. I have to think a lot of other people listen to music this way too.

So what does this mean for Apple TV? Well, I’ve long felt that Apple TV’s biggest competitor isn’t other streaming boxes like Amazon’s Fire TV, but rather smart TVs themselves. If all most customers want is access to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, most new TVs have those built right in. Apple’s finally bringing their biggest profit center from Apple TV to the smart TV itself. It’s going to be really interesting to see if Apple makes similar deals with other TV makers. My bet is that they will, but perhaps Samsung gets some kind of temporary exclusivity. Meanwhile the Apple TV will continue to be a niche product. I still love mine and would likely continue to watch my iTunes content there even if I do eventually get the iTunes app on my Samsung TV. Samsung’s smart TV platform is actually pretty good, but there’s no one who does a better job of UI/UX than Apple.

2019 is shaping up to be a really interesting year for Apple, and particularly around its digital content. This is the first shoe to drop, but there will be others. Buckle up.
['John Sherrod']
['Apple TV', 'Samsung', 'Apple', 'Technology', 'TV']