Bengaluru (TIP)- Apple is tying up with India’s Airtel to offer the telecom firm’s premium customers its music and video streaming services for free, potentially giving the US firm access to thousands of consumers in a price-sensitive market. The move comes as competition tightens in India’s $28-billion entertainment market and an $8.5-billion merger of the Indian media assets of Reliance and Walt Disney faces close scrutiny from regulators.
“Apple TV+ will come bundled with premium Airtel WiFi and Postpaid plans,” Airtel said in a statement on Tuesday, though the companies did not disclose a deal value for the partnership or information on costs.
With mostly English-language content, Apple TV+ is a small player in the Indian market, where its rivals include Netflix , Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema. Apple is following competitors in bundling streaming services with telecom plans to grow its audience more quickly.
Premium users of Airtel’s broadband and postpaid services can access Apple TV+ and Apple Music later this year as part of their plans. Airtel will shut its music app Wynk in this process, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Airtel has about 281 million subscribers for its India telecom offerings, while its top rival, Ambani’s Reliance Jio, has about 489 million.
Ambani announces suite of AI tools called ‘Jio Brain’
Reliance Jio is developing a suite of tools and applications that span the entire artificial intelligence (AI) lifecycle called ‘JioBrain,’ Reliance Industries’ Chairman Mukesh Ambani said during the conglomerate’s 47th Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Thursday, August 29.
The company will set AI-ready data centres at Jamnagar, in Gujarat powered by the company’s green energy, said Ambani.
“We are also starting to use JioBrain to drive a similar transformation across other Reliance operating companies, and to fast-track their AI journey as well,” Ambani said.
“I anticipate that by perfecting JioBrain within Reliance, we will create a powerful AI service platform that we can offer to other enterprises as well,” he added.
JioBrain integrates 5G’s high speed, and low latency with machine learning capabilities such as anomaly detection, predictive forecasting and automation. The platform can train and apply machine learning (ML) models at the network edge and in the service provider cloud.
“This enables CSPs (cloud service providers) to apply machine learning to not only the network but also to a wide range of 5G services and industrial applications including image and video AI at the edge, probing at the edge, healthcare, education, gaming, and entertainment use cases,” as per Jio Brain’s website.