Apple and Disney belatedly sever corporate ties

Disney CEO Bob Iger has been on the Apple board for eight years but, with the two companies now competing directly in the SVOD market, he has resigned.

Last week Apple officially launched its Apple TV+ subscription video on demand service last week, thus placing it in direct competition with Disney, which is also set to get into the SVOD game with, you guessed it, Disney+. For some reason the two companies left it until the very last minute for Iger to clear off, despite the two competing service having been in development for months.

“On September 10, 2019, Bob Iger resigned from the Board of Directors of Apple Inc,” said the abrupt, unsentimental Apple SEC filing. The Hollywood Reporter got a bit more comment on the matter, with Iger saying how great Apple is and Apple returning the compliment, which is nice. Whether relations will remain so cordial when they’re trying to steal SVOD market share from each other remains to be seen. For some reason Iger is still isted as a board member on the Apple site.

While Iger has been on the Apple board, links between the two companies go a lot further back than that. Apple founder Steve jobs was also the founder of Pixar Animation and thus become one of the largest Disney shareholder when it bought Pixar in 2006. Jobs also joined the Disney board at that time and stayed until his death in 2011.

As companies Apple and Disney have a lot in common. They both position themselves as premium consumer brands and invest heavily in their brand image. They also have a reputation for wanting to control everything around their product offering and image, so it’s not at all surprising that they would want to have their own SVOD services offering only their own stuff rather than rely on third parties for distribution or content.

One other big thing they have in common is a desire to be viewed as wholesome, family companies, which creates the possibility that they will end up producing fairly similar content. Right now Disney is mainly about feature-length movies while Apple seems to be focusing more in TV-style stuff. But that distinction could easily change over the years and, if it does, these two American icons will be fighting for the same wholesome dollar.