Rumor claims Apple TV app is coming to Android

Apple’s TV+ service is available across almost every smart television, game console, streaming stick, iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Windows PCs. It’s even available on Android-powered televisions, but you can’t yet run it on Android. That’s about to change if the latest single-source rumor is to be believed.

‘Believe’

A Tweet from the tech industry rumourmonger, ShrimpApplePro claims the following: Apple is beta testing an Apple TV app for Android internally. The software will be released “soon”, alongside an updated Apple Music app for Android.

That’s the claim.

It makes sense. Apple is quite evidently attempting to build something with its media services that has a life outside of the traditional Apple-only walled garden. That’s great news to Ted Lasso fans, or followers of any of the rest of the company’s increasingly deep and quite excellent TV catalogue, but it’s also good news for anyone subscribed to the Apple TV empire who may not use an iPhone. It means you’ll be able to watch TV+ on an Android device, which, presumably, will extend to streaming it from the handset to other devices.

At least, I hope it does.

At present you can still watch this content using a browser on your Android device, go to tv.apple.com to subscribe to and watch Apple TV+ in a web browser.

Don’t trust rumor until it’s true

This is only speculation, but I think Apple wants to maximize the reach for its TV empire, and why would it not? The company has built a worthwhile if small pool of content at this stage, and this material will be of great interest to anyone who enjoys high quality entertainment, regardless of which platform they happen to make use of.

In addition to which – well, business is business, and in those terms, Apple isn’t going to mind too much which platform you use, so long as you pay for access to TV+. The content it is creating is world class and deserves access to a global audience.

exclusive
Apple TV app is coming to Android, currently are still internal beta testing. Will soon be released.
Oh Apple Music app for Android is also getting updated too.

— ShrimpApplePro 🍤 (@VNchocoTaco) December 20, 2022

When wis this coming?

We don’t know.

The original speculator claims, cryptically, that “Apple TV for Android TV is different than Apple TV for Android FYI,” which means it won’t work in the same way as the interface on your smart television set.

I’m presuming part of this may be some form of built in access through which to purchase content, assuming Apple’s made a deal to let it do so. Otherwise, content will be acquired outside of the device on another device. I’m also assuming the ‘different’ nature of the beast may reflect a stealth service upgrade of some kind, despite the reported failure to reach a deal with NFL.

[Also read: Apple sets us up for NYE with ‘Apple Music Sing’]

In any case, watch this space, not to neglect that in Apple rumor-monger world, “soon” can sometimes become years. All the same, it kind of makes sense for the company to take this step to expand its potential market, so I imagine we may not be waiting long. In an ideal world, I guess, this would appear alongside Apple Music Classical and some other goodies at some point.

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