“Apple Inc appears to be arming itself for a full-on assault on the $150 billion-plus world of multimedia content and distribution,” Poornima Gupta reports for Reuters.
“The move would pit Apple more directly than ever against new-media rivals Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, and even Netflix Inc, which all want to be an online hub for Web video, music and pictures,” Gupta reports. “Apple’s edge comes down to its record of striking deals for key content, most clearly seen in digital music service iTunes. It also has a big cash pile. Apple is estimated to be spending up to 5 percent — or over $5 billion — of its expected annual revenue this year on capital investments, most notably in a North Carolina data center that will dwarf its current one.”
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Gupta reports, “‘The future is … you want to be able to shift your content between all your screens and be able to do that pretty easily and seamlessly,’ said Peter Misek, Jefferies & Co analyst, who expects a fee-based video service from Apple in about a year. ‘I can think of no other company that would be better at making something really dummy proof than Apple,’ he added… The company is likely to address some of its cloud-based plans at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month… ‘They have made a big investment in this (cloud) space and so we expect it will be something substantial when they do it,’ said Channing Smith, co-manager of Capital Advisors Growth Fund.”
Read more in the full article here.
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