Streaming: Apple TV+ puts it in the US top-5 for the first time

Apple’s television department has a reason to celebrate: The TV+team has succeeded in penetrating the top 5 of the American streaming charts for the first time. The Freshly published hit list covers the first half of 2025 and comes from the quota knife Nielsen. They come from smart televisions (“Connected TVs”) and various streaming devices. Apple made it to 5th place-with the long-awaited 2nd season of the Mystery Drama series “Severance”. However, this is the only TV+show that it has packed in the top 10 of the Nielsen streaming ratings. Otherwise it is mainly dominated by Netflix (four out of ten shows), Paramount+ (two shows) is also going well. Surprisingly, Amazon’s Prime Video is only represented once in the TOP 10 – with “Reacher” in second place. The provider Max (soon again HBO Max) and Hulu only made it into the top ten places in the hit list with one show.

What the Americans preferred to stream

The most popular was the violent series “Squid Game” by Netflix, followed by, as already mentioned, “Reacher”. Then come the Netflix shows “Night Agent” as well as “Ginny & Georgia” and finally “Severance”. The differences in the period of use are great: the number of streaming minutes in half from 1st place is halved. It is interesting how dominant the big tech companies in the content business are now. They dominate both the top 5 (all five places) and the top 10 (six out of ten places). Max, Hulu and Paramount+, which are operated by classic media groups, have to put back.

However, there is also a development in terms of diversity: the only streaming mastery Netflix once had 80 percent market share (2021), according to analysts, should now be melted to a good 50 percent. However, this also reflects a problem for users: these have to subscribe to more and more platforms in order to actually see all of the content that is interesting for them.

Users need many subscriptions

The once modern “All You Can Eat” streaming business is approaching classic cable providers in the United States, where you have had to book expensive program packages of individual providers for decades to satisfy your entire TV taste.

Another exciting development according to the Nielsen numbers: Users turn to advertising-financed services because they do not feel like too many subscriptions. The aspiring providers include Roku, Tubi and even YouTube. The Google daughter’s television market share is now to be 12.5 percent. Disney+ and Peacock (NBC Universal) did not make it into the top 10 of the Nielsen streaming charts.