Apple claimed it had less than 20 million TV+ subscribers in July, showbiz union says

Published

4 years ago

September 25, 2021

admin

In this article

AAPL

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., smiles while speaking about Apple TV+ during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2019.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple claimed its TV+ service had less than 20 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada as of July, allowing it to pay behind-the-scenes production crew lower rates than streamers with more subscriptions, according to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a union that represents TV and movie workers who perform jobs like operating cameras and building sets.

Apple has never revealed subscriber numbers for its Apple TV+ streaming service, which launched in the fall of 2019. Analysts are reluctant to offer estimates, but many say that its scale pales in comparison to services like Netflix, which claimed 209 million subscribers as of Q2, and Disney+, which claimed 116 million.

The fact that Apple can pay a discounted rate despite being the most valuable publicly traded company in the world highlights some of the issues facing Hollywood workers as streaming supplants linear TV and movies, and is raising ire among union members who are deciding whether to strike for better pay and working conditions.

Under the current contract, high-budget productions intended for streaming can offer lower rates to workers if the streaming service has less than 20 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, which is determined on July 1 every year. Apple told IATSE that it had less than 20 million subscribers, a union spokesman said.

The union is currently in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over a new contract. Apple is a member of the alliance, but the alliance negotiates for all of its members, and doesn’t create carve-outs for specific companies, according to a spokesperson for the industry group.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on subscriber numbers but said the company pays rates in line with leading streaming services.

Under the current contract, productions made for streaming services are governed under less strict labor terms than traditional TV shows or movies because streaming profitability is “presently uncertain” and productions needed greater flexibility, according to a copy of the contract reviewed by CNBC.

But union leaders argue that streaming is no longer a particularly new form of media, and companies that bankroll streaming productions should pay rates closer to traditional media productions.

“Workers on certain ‘new media’ streaming projects get paid less, even on productions with budgets that rival or exceed those of traditionally released blockbusters,” an IATSE press release said this week, noting that negotiations had stalled.

IATSE is gearing up for a strike, its spokesman said, and ballots allowing the union’s 150,000 members to authorize a strike will be sent out on October 1.

While new media pay rates are one of the issues currently under negotiation, the most pressing issue is working conditions on set, including long working hours, which have gotten worse during the Covid-19 pandemic, the union spokesperson said. Celebrities and actors have started to post messages on social media supporting the IATSE union and potential strike.

Apple has reportedly spent up to $15 million per episode of shows like “The Morning Show” to try and bulk up its service with premium content. Apple also bundled free trials with the purchase of new phones or tablets, and those trials started expiring in July, forcing many users to decide whether it was worth $4.99 per month. Apple sold an estimated 206 million iPhones globally in 2020, which would amount to a lot of free trials.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock and ViacomCBS’ Paramount+ also have under 20 million subscribers, allowing them to ask for discounts on labor, the union spokesman said.

A ViacomCBS spokesperson said the company doesn’t break out Paramount+ streaming numbers. NBCUniversal didn’t have a comment by publication time.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal, which owns and operates Peacock, is also the parent company of CNBC.

Technology

Amazon suspends engineer who protested company’s work with Israeli government

Published

2 hours ago

September 11, 2025

admin

Amazon suspends engineer who protested company's work with Israeli government

Amazon suspended a software engineer who protested the company’s work with the Israeli government, CNBC has confirmed.

Ahmed Shahrour, a Palestinian engineer who works for Amazon’s Whole Foods business and is based in Seattle, was informed Monday morning that he was being suspended with pay “until further notice” after he posted messages on Slack criticizing the company’s ties to Israel.

“It has come to Amazon’s attention that a post you made in multiple internal company Slack channels may violate multiple policies,” an Amazon human resources representative wrote in a message, which was viewed by CNBC. The company said in the message that it’s investigating the incident.

Earlier Monday, Shahrour posted messages across several internal Slack channels and sent a letter to Amazon executives, including CEO Andy Jassy, detailing his concerns.

Shahrour urged the company to drop Project Nimbus, Amazon and Google’s joint $1.2 billion cloud computing contract launched in 2021 to provide the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure.

“Every day I write code at Whole Foods, I remember my brothers and sisters in Gaza being starved by Israel’s man-made blockade,” Shahrour, who joined Amazon three years ago, wrote in the letter. “I live in a state of constant dissonance: maintaining the tools that make this company profit, while my people are burned and starved with the help of that very profit. I am left with no choice but to resist directly.”

The letter was earlier reported by independent journalist Kali Hays.

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser didn’t specifically address Shahrour’s situation.

“We don’t tolerate discrimination, harassment, or threatening behavior or language of any kind in our workplace, and when any conduct of that nature is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings,” Glasser wrote in an email to CNBC.

The company didn’t respond to questions about its work with Israel or its policies for moderating employee posts on internal channels.

Tech workers at Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Palantir and other companies have become more outspoken in their criticism of business dealings with the Israeli military.

Microsoft last month fired two employees who participated in a protest inside the company’s headquarters. In April 2024, Google terminated 28 employees after a series of protests against labor conditions and its involvement in Project Nimbus. Tech firms have ramped up security at some conferences in recent months after an uptick in protests.

Amazon hasn’t acknowledged the Nimbus contract beyond stating that it provides technology to customers “wherever they are located.” Google has previously said it provides generally available cloud computing services to the Israeli government that aren’t “directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads.” Microsoft said last month that most of its work with Israel Defense Forces involves cybersecurity for the country, and that the company intends to provide technology in an ethical way.

As part of the suspension, Amazon revoked Shahrour’s access to company email and tools, and removed his Slack posts, he told CNBC in an interview. Shahrour said Amazon didn’t state what policies his posts violated.

The letter also alleges Amazon has taken steps to “silence” pro-Palestinian employees who have criticized the war in Gaza. Amazon recently issued a warning to an engineer who shared an article about American doctors volunteering in Gaza and it fired an employee in France who spoke out against Israel on social media, Shahrour said. CNBC confirmed the account with a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.

The company has deleted posts in the “Arabs at Amazon” Slack channel that discussed the conflict in Gaza, while posts in other channels disparaging Palestinians weren’t removed, Shahrour said.

“It feels like I can’t voice anything, and if I do, I’m going to get a warning,” he said.

Microsoft employees earlier this year expressed concern that the company blocked Outlook emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” “genocide,” “apartheid” and “IOF off Azure,” while messages with the word “Israel” could go through, CNBC reported in May.

A Microsoft spokesperson previously said the company took steps to “try and reduce” widely shared emails that were sent to employees who hadn’t “opted in.”

WATCH: Israel’s plays to take over Gaza City

Technology

Adobe’s stock gains on earnings, revenue beat

Published

3 hours ago

September 11, 2025

admin

Adobe's stock gains on earnings, revenue beat

An Adobe sign hangs along Main Street during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 in Park City, Utah.

David Becker | Getty Images

Adobe reported fiscal third-quarter results that topped analysts’ estimates. The design software maker’s shares rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: $5.31 adjusted vs. $5.18 expected
Revenue: $5.99 billion vs. $5.91 billion expected

Revenue increased 11% from $5.41 billion a year earlier, Adobe said in a statement. Net income rose to $1.77 billion, or $4.18 per share, from $1.68 billion, or $3.76 per share, a year ago.

For the fourth quarter, the company says earnings per share will be $5.35 to $5.40, topping the average analyst estimate of $5.34. Adobe’s guidance for revenue for the quarter is $6.08 billion to $6.13 billion, while analysts expected $6.08 billion, according to LSEG.

Adobe said it expects annualized revenue in its digital media business to increase 11.3% for the fiscal year, up from a prior forecast of 11% growth. Digital media revenue for the fourth quarter will be $4.56 billion to $4.51 billion, beating the $4.51 billion average estimate, according to StreetAccount.

As of Thursday’s close, Adobe’s stock was down 21% this year, badly underperforming tech peers and the broader Nasdaq, which is up 14%.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.

Technology

Oracle shares retreat 6% after sharpest rally in more than 30 years

Published

4 hours ago

September 11, 2025

admin

Oracle shares retreat 6% after sharpest rally in more than 30 years

Safra A. Catz, CEO of Oracle, on Oct. 7, 2024.

Marco Bello | Reuters

Oracle shares closed down 6% on Thursday, a day after the stock closed at a record high, following an analyst note expressing concern that most of the company’s upcoming growth is coming from a single client: OpenAI.

The software vendor has seen its stock go on a wild ride this week after CEO Safra Catz on Tuesday said that Oracle had “signed four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers” in the latest quarter. The company’s remaining performance obligation, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, swelled to $455 billion, up 359% year over year.

In its forecasts, Oracle called for cloud infrastructure revenue to expand 14-fold by 2030.

In extended trading on Tuesday, Oracle stock moved up 30% following the company announcing fiscal first-quarter results. On Wednesday, the stock ended the day up nearly 36%, closing at a record high of $328.33.

The build-out is part of a broad expansion across technology to put in place the necessary infrastructure to meet demand for applications that draw on sophisticated artificial intelligence models that typically run on Nvidia chips.

But the excitement around Oracle’s projections were tempered after The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that OpenAI is set to pay Catz’s company $300 billion over five years. That report came after OpenAI during the quarter announced an agreement with Oracle to build 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity. The two companies declined to comment on the report.

“Our enthusiasm for Oracle’s backlog announcements is significantly tempered by the report that it came almost entirely from OpenAI,” Gil Luria, an analyst with a neutral rating on Oracle shares, wrote in a note distributed to clients on Thursday.