It Might Be a While Before iTunes is Competing With Netflix

itunes movies china

Funny thing, we had always thought iTunes had a much bigger share of the streaming market than some recently reported numbers.

Turns out, Netflix still holds the throne, YouTube is still a ways behind, and iTunes isn’t really in the running. Apple Insider is reporting that Netflix holds over 35% of peak internet downloads, meaning the total amount of data transferred during the most active hours of streaming. You can see the various streaming services compared below:
itunes versus netflix

We certainly knew Netflix would be at the top of the list, and YouTube in second, but after that, we would have guessed that iTunes would have perhaps been third, as their service seems like it would be next in line with Apple’s marketing machine. Turns out it’s wrapped in nicely with other services such as Hulu and Amazon Video, which both seemed prime to capture a bigger share of these graphs in the coming years.

Now if Apple starts moving iTunes, or some subsequent service, more towards a subscription model with unlimited streaming, then it does seem likely that Apple could snag some more usage. But until then, Netflix will likely reign atop this list. iTunes itself is structured different, as users have to pay for individual movies and television episodes, as compared to Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Video, where users can simply put on content and stream to their hearts’ content.

But in a market getting more and more competitive, keeping people actively in your own entertainment ecosystem is only going to get more important.

Will iTunes consider a move in the near future? We’ll be watching closely.