Apple and Disney Have a Huge Advantage in Streaming

We're within a month of the launches of two highly anticipated streaming video services: Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) Apple TV+ and Disney's (NYSE:DIS) Disney+. Both management and analysts have lofty expectations for how many subscribers those services can attract. Disney told investors it expects 60 million to 90 million Disney+ subscribers by 2024. Meanwhile, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives expects Apple TV+ to reach 100 million subscribers by the end of 2023. Those numbers may seem astronomical, even compared to Netflix's (NASDAQ:NFLX) 150 million global subscribers. Remember, it took Netflix over a decade to build that subscriber base.  But both Apple and Disney have something Netflix and their other major competitors lack: the ability to subsidize subscriptions with other streams of revenue. Both Apple and Disney are in a position to sell subscriptions to their streaming services as a means of locking consumers into their respective ecosystems. They're using cheap subscriptions to sell other products and services. Apple's literally using Apple TV+ as marketing material for its device sales. It's offering a free year of the service to anyone who buys a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, or Mac. Importantly, that tactic's likely much more effective than dropping the price of a new iPhone by $50, or spending the money it spent on content on additional marketing campaigns due to consumers' perceived value of the bundle.