HBO MAX and Discovery plus merges into one App

The Discovery and Warner Media are set to merge as one, the two companies’ streaming apps will be coming together as a merger of their own. This was confirmed by Discovery CFO, Gunnar Wiedenfels during the Deutsche Bank 30th Annual Media, Internet and Telecom Conference on Monday.

According to Wiedenfels, he gave an up-close and personal illustration of the streaming app situation post-merger. He stated that before the streaming app became one, there are certain important bundling options. An example is how Disney often bundles Disney Plus, and how Hulu and ESPN also bundle as one, this then goes to say how the two apps will become a massive and responsive unwieldy beast of a product as a result of the merger. 

This is because HBO MAX has loads of content to keep an individual engaged despite being a service that has been discovered to be watched every day by a large number of subscribers.

Unlike the Apple TV, where restarting the app is a way of trying to navigate directly to connect to a show from Apple’s Up Next feature and sometimes selecting a show from the app directly or when you want to watch something else as soon as it airs automatically restarts or crashes the app. Many users have complained about the app crashing during the Euphoria Premiere some weeks ago.

Being one of the very first streaming apps to simulcast streams with the air content, it is believed that the app would have known how to handle and organize the eagerness and rush by their subscribers to catch a glimpse of the season finale after it was announced to have been released during multiple premieres and the finale of games of throne and others. 

Earlier this year, the app crashes if more than 12 people logged in at the same time, having identified this problem as a technological issue that should have been corrected by HBO years ago. With the uncertainty of that part, the new company will possess the ownership of creating a new combined content app. The cost of the new app is still unknown. The two companies are maintaining the ad-Supported and also the free-ad tiers, with “Discover plus” which is about $4.99 and $6.99 monthly and the HBO Max’s cost about $9.99 and 14.99 monthly.

While coming together as one app, the companies are looking into mashing the prices together just as the apps and content are been combined as one, and that will mean the service which they provide will go for about $14.99 and $21.99 monthly.

One reference point is Netflix’s, currently, they are been rated as one of the best thrivings in the streaming world and has their price ranging from $9.99 or $19.99 in just a month, which also depends on the number of screens and durable quality of streams. With having the best-looking streaming app business with an algorithm that suggests content that its subscriber might want to watch. With all these, one is certainly not convinced that the new company understands this.

In Wiedenfels’s presentation, he emphasised more about content and did not extensively talk about the quality of the app. According to him, “The combination could not make more sense than what we’re doing here. We have HBO Max, with a more premium, male-skewing positioning, and then you’ve got the female-positioning on the Discovery side,” he went further to express his excitement when he saw the combined metrics, because according to the theory, the acquisition power of HBO Max, together with it’s retention power of the discovery contents is going to expand the DTC product.

It is certain that with the two companies merging the content being placed will be worth it, But hopefully doesn’t result to crashing when they try to have access.

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