How Apple, Disney and Others Aim To Keep Streaming Subscribers

The streaming wars are getting ever more intense. Reuters published a good look at how all the various services, including Apple, aim to keep subscribers.

Besides spending millions of dollars on library content, media companies are using programming, promotions and other strategies to avoid cancellations, or “churn” in industry parlance, and retain subscribers who are costly to acquire and easy to lose. “Churning off of a service once meant finding the phone number of your cable operator, navigating an automated menu and waiting on hold,” said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners. “We now live in a world where with a couple of clicks of your finger on your phone, all of the friction from cancellation is gone.” Disney is the only streaming provider that has used a multi-year promotion to lock in subscribers. In August, the company offered new and existing members of its D23 fan club an annual rate of $47 for a three-year commitment to Disney+ – 33% off the standard price.

Google's OpenTitan aims to Create an Open Source Secure Enclave

Google wants Android phones to have a Secure Enclave chip like iPhones. Its OpenTitan project aims to help design an open source one.

OpenTitan is loosely based on a proprietary root-of-trust chip that Google uses in its Pixel 3 and 4 phones. But OpenTitan is its own chip architecture and extensive set of schematics developed by engineers at lowRISC, along with partners at ETH Zurich, G+D Mobile Security, Nuvoton Technology, Western Digital, and, of course, Google.

The consortium will use community feedback and contributions to develop and improve the industry-grade chip design, while lowRISC will manage the project and keep suggestions and proposed changes from going live haphazardly.

You can view the OpenTitan Github repo here, but it’s not fully fleshed out yet.