“With everyone focused on the incredibly expensive acquisition of YouTube by Google, attention once again drifted away from the Apple connection to Google and what may be the big long term plan jointly being executed by both companies,” Rob Enderle writes for Digital Trends. “Microsoft’s Media Center and Intel’s Viiv initiative have fallen way short of expectations and neither Tivo nor 3rd party PVR’s have successfully filled the gap either.”
The door is currently “open to someone that can connect the dots between on-line rich content and the living room experience we seem to want, but are currently not getting,” Enderle writes. “Apple has the upcoming iTV and a demonstrated capability of making the overall user experience vastly better than we have now. The iPod not only demonstrated that Apple understands what the market wants but that, even after Apple demonstrated the solution, that most competitors still don’t get what makes the iPod a success. But Apple really doesn’t, by itself, have a good delivery or video file management system for the content already on the web. With YouTube, they get content and content management, and with Google they get access to the massive amount of dark fiber (high speed data lines that Google has purchased but which currently are not being used).”
“The resulting power of the combined entities could be enough to open up the other movie studios and accelerate the movements of the networks to provide their content libraries over this new service. Cable and DSL suppliers should not only be worried but Cisco and Microsoft as well because, should this be successful, Cisco and Microsoft’s efforts could be rendered obsolete,” Endlere writes.
A possible Apple-Google merger that “would allow Steve Jobs to finally follow Bill Gates and Scott McNealy into a more formal semi-retirement” in the full article here.
When Enderle leaves out his usual forced pro-Microsoft / anti-Apple comments, he makes for much more interesting reading. While we don’t foresee a merger or any evidence that Jobs is looking forward to retirement, it would be very interesting to see what two powerful allies such as Apple and Google could conjure up together.
Related articles:
Enderle: ‘4th quarter will be Apple’s hardest since the first iPod Christmas’ – September 18, 2006
Enderle: Microsoft Zune ‘a design mistake’ – September 15, 2006
Enderle: Anticipating an Apple-Google Merger – September 05, 2006
Enderle details his idea of ‘Apple’s Leopard Strategy’ – August 14, 2006
Enderle: Microsoft’s ‘iPod killer’ Zune is ‘brilliant strategy’ – July 24, 2006
Enderle on what it would take for Microsoft to kill Apple’s iPod – July 10, 2006
Enderle spouts some incredible nonsense about Apple iPod+iTunes – July 07, 2006
Enderle: If Apple can’t double market share it will abandon Macs – May 02, 2006
Enderle: Apple as Windows OEM – April 10, 2006
Enderle: Apple’s Boot Camp allowing Windows on Mac ‘could change PC landscape as we know it’ – April 06, 2006