And The Oscar Goes To... Apple

Gene Munster, one of the Street's most notable Apple Inc. AAPL analysts, left his job at Piper Jaffray to co-found a venture capital firm called Loup Ventures with Doug Clinton and Andrew Murphy.

Ahead of this weekend's 89th Oscars, Murphy penned a post titled "When will Apple win its first Oscar?" and explored when the iPhone maker will win the highest award for its own original content.

According to Murphy, Apple will win an Oscar within five years, which also happens to mark the amount of time it will take the company to scale its original content. Today, the company is spending less than $200 million in producing content, but Murphy thinks this figure will soar to as much as $7 billion within five years.

See Also: Gene Munster Shares His Expectations For Apple's iPhone 10

Murphy said Apple needs to play catch up with the notable leaders in streaming video and original content, including Netflix, Inc. NFLX and Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN. Within five years, however, Apple will still trail the two current industry giants who will likely be spending $10 billion each on their own content.

Apple Needs Content

Murphy argued that even though Apple is serious about content, it may be a necessary move to offer investors a new growth driver for years to come. Needless to say, Apple has sufficient resources to keep up with the major players.

"Any vibrant entertainment ecosystem needs exclusive content," Murphy argued. "Tunes and Apple Music, for example, already leverage exclusive relationships with app developers, music labels, and artists, along with TV and film content providers in order to gain an edge over competing services. Owned content is the ultimate exclusivity."

Apple already has two exclusive shows, "Planet of the Apps" and "Carpool Karaoke," both of which will be available on the Apple Music platform. But this is merely the very early stages with much more to come over the years.