Streaming service Apple will not get Netflix series

Apple’s upcoming streaming service for movies and series will not get content from Netflix. That has been confirmed by the director of Netflix. The company prefers that customers watch films and series via its own service.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says both companies did talk. “We have chosen not to integrate our services,” the director told Variety. Apple has an event planned for next week, presumably to showcase its streaming service to the world.

It seems that in addition to its own productions, Apple will also resell third-party streaming services via its own Apple TV app. That’s something Netflix would rather not have, because it wants to monitor its own app and in that way also collect more data about users in order to make recommendations.

It is unknown which streaming services will be included in the Apple TV app. Streaming services can thus get customers more easily, because the closing and checkout work via Apple, where customers often have already entered a credit card or other payment details. Netflix previously stopped offering subscriptions via its iOS app, because it no longer wants to pay 30 percent of the subscription price for subscriptions purchased via Apple’s mobile devices. There’s no other way to widely distribute apps on iOS than through Apple’s own App Store.

With the upcoming streaming service, Apple and Netflix are openly competing for the first time. Apple came a few years ago with music streaming service Apple Music, a competitor for services such as Deezer and Spotify. Spotify and Apple came into conflict in the past week over the possible favor of Apple Music within iOS and disadvantages Spotify.