Rumor: Apple’s TV subscription service to launch in the first half of 2019

Apple plans to launch its planned TV subscription service in more than 100 countries, according to The Information, quoting three unnamed “people familiar with the matter.” It will debut in the U.S. in the first half of next year, the article adds.

The Information says the TV service will include Apple’s original programs free to Apple device owners and also will enable users to sign up for TV network subscriptions owned by other companies, just as Amazon Prime Video subscribers can do through the Amazon Channels feature in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan.  Amazon Prime Video is currently available in 200 countries while Netflix is in more than 190 countries. 

Upcoming original programming titles from Apple include “Amazing Stores,” “Are You Sleeping,” “Home,” “Little America,” “See,” “Swagger,” an untitled Damien Chazelle drama, an untitled Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Anniston dreamed, “Dickinson” (a half-hour comedy starring Hailee Stenifeld), an Ronald D. Moore science-fiction drama dubbed “For All Mankind,” an untitled M. Night Shyamalan thriller series, a TV series adaption of “Foundation,” the Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy, and the half-hour dramedy “Little Voices” from producers J.J. Abrams and Sara Bareilles, “Little America” from the screenwriters (Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani) of “The Big Sick” and producer/writer Lee Eisenberg, a drama series about pre-teen investigative reporter Hilde Lysiak, a TV series based on the “Time Bandits” movie, an English-language adaptation of the French short-form series Canal+, “See,” a world-building drama set in the future, a series based on the bestselling 2017 novel “Pachinko,” a half-hour scripted comedy from Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, “Defending Jacob” starring Chris Evans, and a series produced by Anonymous Content and based on the New York Times article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.”