“Apple Inc. is stitching together a network of Internet infrastructure capable of delivering large amounts of content to customers, giving the company more control over the distribution of its online offerings while laying the groundwork for more traffic if it decides to move deeper into television,” Drew Fitzgerald and Daisuke Wakabayashi report for The Wall Street Journal. “Apple’s online delivery needs have grown in the last few years, driven by its iCloud service for storing users’ data and rising sales of music, videos and games from iTunes and the App Store. But the iPhone maker is reported to have broader ambitions for television that could involve expanding its Apple TV product or building its own television set.”
“Snapping up Internet infrastructure supports all those pursuits at once. Apple is signing long-term deals to lock up bandwidth and hiring more networking experts,” Fitzgerald and Wakabayashi report. “Bill Norton, chief strategy officer for International Internet Exchange, which helps companies line up Internet traffic agreements, estimates that Apple has in a short time bought enough bandwidth from Web carriers to move hundreds of gigabits of data each second. ‘That’s the starting point for a very, very big network,’ Mr. Norton said.”
“The company’s need for bandwidth and supporting infrastructure will grow if it moves further into television. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said improving the TV viewing experience is an area of interest for the company and that it has a “great vision” for television,” Fitzgerald and Wakabayashi report. “On a conference call last week to discuss its latest earnings with analysts, Mr. Cook said Apple is on track to break into new product categories this year, fueling speculation about a new television or revamped video service.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One of the main problems with Apple TV, right now, is the cable company’s modem (and God knows what throttling) and/or convoluted Internet routing that sometimes causes Apple TV content to stop playing in the middle of a movie or TV show (usually prompting some people in the room to incorrectly blame Apple and/or the Apple TV unit).
