As Apple TV+ and the company’s other Services continue to grow with more content, Apple is investing in the backend with a big hire for its technical team. Reported by the Wall Street Journal, Apple has poached one of Netflix’s top engineers, Ruslan Meshenberg.
The WSJ highlights that Apple has faced challenges with rolling out a variety of its Services over the years like Apple Maps, iCloud, and Apple Music. Looking to head off issues as Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and more expand the company has made a big hire for its internet-services team this week.
Ruslan Meshenberg, who helped build out Netflix’s platform and was involved in key initiatives to create a speedier, more consistent service for viewers, joined Apple’s internet-services organization this week, according to people familiar with the hire and his social-media accounts. He joins Apple at the same time it is expanding its $4.99-a-month TV+ service with other new hires, additional shows and movies—a complex undertaking that has tripped up other entrants into the video-streaming business.
The WSJ report also mentions the technical issues Disney+ saw at launch. While Apple TV+ hasn’t seen problems of the same nature, Meshenberg is expected to help with building a reliable infrastructure for Apple’s Services as they scale, like he did at Netflix.
Mr. Meshenberg has the experience to help Apple address technical challenges. At Netflix, he ran much of the infrastructure that guaranteed television shows and movies played reliably, even as the company expanded to more than 50 countries and streaming increased to more than one billion hours of programming weekly.
In Apple’s record-breaking fiscal Q1 2020, its Services generated almost $13 billion in revenue. While Apple TV+ is free for a majority of customers for the first year, at the end of 2020, the streaming service could start generating a notable amount of revenue.
In somewhat related and curious news, former HBO CEO Richard Plepler who recently signed a five-year deal with Apple TV+ just invested in and joined the board for the Apple Podcasts competitor Luminary.
Related:
- Former HBO boss officially inks five-year exclusive production deal with Apple TV+
- Netflix punches down at newcomer Apple TV+ in latest earnings release
- Second report suggests Apple and MGM held ‘preliminary’ talks about an acquisition
- Apple TV+ subscribers: More than Hulu and, for the moment, Disney+
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