Apple folds Apple TV and Arcade into paid iCloud+ plans in more than 100 countries

In Nigeria or Pakistan, a customer who has been paying for Apple TV and nothing else will get a notification saying they are now an iCloud+ subscriber. The old standalone subscription will be cancelled ^[9][6]. Arcade players keep their saves and progress ^[5]. MacRumors does not report what those migrated customers will be billed ^[14].

The published country list names 102 countries and territories ^[12]. Calling them emerging markets does not quite describe the line Apple drew: Singapore, Israel, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sit on it next to Nepal and Kenya ^[6]. In every listed place, Apple had been selling iCloud+, Apple TV and Apple Arcade as three separate subscriptions. Now it sells one ^[2][5].

Once the standalone subscription is gone, a count of Apple TV subscribers in these countries is a count of people who bought storage ^[5][2]. Attach rate stops telling you anything about appetite for the content, because attach is automatic from the 50GB tier upward ^[2]. A rising attach number in these countries now reports how iCloud+ storage sold ^[2].

Apple TV is also expanding to 59 new countries and now reaches 170, which puts its footprint before the change at 111 ^[8][13]. If all 59 come from the bundle list, then in the other 43 listed countries Apple TV was already on sale by itself and is now sold only inside iCloud+ ^[15].

"We're excited to bring Apple TV and Apple Arcade to iCloud+ users in over 100 countries in one convenient subscription," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Services and Health ^[11]. MacRumors describes Apple One as effectively being wound down in these markets: new customers cannot subscribe, and existing ones can keep their plans ^[7][10]. The third piece is Apple Music Select, ad-free Apple-curated stations included with paid iCloud+ to move subscribers toward a full Apple Music plan. Apple's Mozambique announcement quotes $2.79 a month for Individual and $4.49 for Family ^[3].

If you sell a subscription into any of those 102 countries, the exercise is not a feature comparison. Split your renewals into two columns: people who came looking for you, and people who arrived as a rider on something else they were already paying for. When the second column is the majority, your price is set by whoever owns the bundle. Apple has now put the marginal price of streaming and games at zero for anyone buying storage ^[2]. I would sell against the storage attach and go after the buyers who came for the catalogue, accepting that you give up the cheap volume a bundle brings. The two figures that survive that choice are renewal after a price rise and how far a new buyer gets into the catalogue in the first month.