Tech company AT&T lost one million TV customers in the last three months — but the company has some plans up their sleeves.
What We Know:
- In their second quarter, the company had a decline of 946,000 total TV customers as well as 168,000 subscribers drop to their streaming service “DirecTV Now.”
- This drop in customers seems to be due to their price jump for their services ($50-$85 from $40-$75 dollars starting in April 2019).
- Their total customer rate is 23 million (2.5 million less than the year before). However, with the company taking ownership of Time Warner (now called WarnerMedia) last June, they are planning on launching “HBO Max” with a limited release later this year for customers to stream HBO and Warner Bros. content. The price has not officially been announced but it is expected to be more than $15, the price of “HBO Now”, HBO’s own personal streaming service.
- Despite the loss of customers, the company’s revenue increased by 15.3% to $44.96 billion in the second quarter due to the Time Warner acquisition.
- It will have plenty of competition with Netflix and Amazon as top competitors and big names launching their own streaming services soon like Disney’s streaming service, “Disney+” for $7 a month in November.
- There is also AT&T TV. Instead of using a satellite dish like with AT&T’s DirecTV, customers will get a device in the mail that plugs into their TVs. The company will test the new, internet-based product later this summer.
- AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson stated that AT&T TV “will be the workhorse over the next couple of years”. He said it will allow the company to lower prices for customers, since it won’t need to send a truck and a worker to install a satellite dish.
Hopefully these next projects give the company a needed boost.
