Oprah had best explanation for what Apple’s TV event was really about

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., waves while onstage with Oprah Winfrey, chief executive officer of Oprah Winfrey Network LLC, during an event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, U.S., on Monday, March 25, 2019.

Apple talked a lot on stage on Monday about its new services, including Apple News+, Apple TV+, a credit card it’s launching with Goldman Sachs and an all-you-can-eat gaming subscription named Arcade. But Apple provided little detail on how many of those services would work.

It didn’t announce pricing for Apple TV+, perhaps the biggest news of the day, and trotted celebrities on stage to talk about new movies and TV shows instead of showing trailers or revealing a sprawling library capable of challenging Amazon and Netflix. Wall Street wasn’t impressed. It was, plainly put, a weird event that was short on details.

But Oprah had the best take on why all of this matters when she appeared on Apple’s stage.

“The Apple platform allows me to do what I do in a whole new way,” she said, sounding a bit like everyone who had appeared before her.

But then she said this:

“They’re in a billion pockets, ya’ll. A billion pockets.”

Oprah was referring to the number of iPhones being used around the world where Apple’s premium services will come pre-installed. Apple no longer reports individual unit sales of its hardware products each quarter, but said in January that there are now more than 900 million iPhones in use around the world.

On top of that, there are hundreds of millions more iPads, Macs and Apple TVs in use today. Plus, Apple’s TV services will be available on third-party devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV.