Apple TV+ content earns 250 award wins, Q3 revenue growth slows to $19.6 billion

Yahoo Finance entertainment reporter Allie Canal outlines Apple's success in streaming content amid slowing growth in its latest earnings report.

Video Transcript

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SEANA SMITH: Record revenue from Apple pushing shares higher this afternoon. Just about 20 minutes to go in the trading day. Shares up just about 3 and 1/2%. Sales from its services division jumping 12% from a year ago. Apple TV+ gaining traction with top titles like "Severance" and "Blackbird."

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal is here to break all of this down for us. And Allie, when we take a look at Apple TV+, yes, it's gaining the number of users quarter over quarter, but how does this stack up to some of the larger streamers out there?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Seana, Apple TV+ showing some pretty strong momentum. Apple on the services side seems to be crushing it. So by all accounts, I thought, OK, Apple TV+ must be doing really well in the streaming wars. But an analyst that I spoke with this morning told me that they're still well behind some of those competitors.

There's a few reasons why, but let's start with the bull case for Apple TV+. What are they doing well right now? Because I think that top line expectation is pretty strong. They have 250 award wins, including a Best Picture win for "CODA." That's the first streaming giant to ever win that award. Two Major League sports partnerships, and let's not forget the platform has access to a lot of Apple resources. A lot of money at its disposal, very great at marketing.

But that's also part of the problem since the streaming service isn't really core to Apple's business. If we take a look at the bear case, they have a very limited amount of content. Apple focused on that high quality original content. They're not really interested in franchises. That's going to hurt them in the long run. There's also a lack of global reach of those emerging markets, increasingly important for streamers. And as I was mentioning, Apple TV+ just is immaterial to Apple's bottom line and valuation at this point.

Now, the services side of the business, I think, will be important down the line, especially as those hardware sales slow. But for right now, I think the biggest issue for Apple is focus.

DAVE BRIGGS: Allie Canal, thanks so much for that report.