Apple’s decision to put iTunes movie and TV rentals on Samsung smart TVs is a huge strategy shift for the company: instead of building services to make its own devices like the HomePod and Apple TV more valuable, the company is allowing those services to be accessed on competing devices. Fundamentally, this all makes sense, since Apple is increasingly focused on services revenue, and it’s been making huge investments in TV content ahead of a long-planned streaming service launch. Whatever Apple TV service comes to fruition will need a lot of scale to succeed, and that means putting apps on platforms other than the Apple TV. Sure.
But the devil’s in the details, and there are lots of unanswered questions about this iTunes deal. Here are...