“The latest rumor going around is that Apple plans to bring its signature iTunes software and store to Android,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “The credibility of this rumor is shoddy at best, but every so often something like this makes the rounds. True or not, this seems like a poor business decision and one that Apple shouldn’t adopt.”
“The real “secret sauce” to Apple’s wild iPhone profitability lies in both the brand loyalty it has garnered over the years and in the differentiated software ecosystem that the company includes with its phones,” Eassa writes. “A big part of the iPhone’s “stickiness” is that plenty of folks own a fairly sizable collection of paid apps, making a move away from the iOS ecosystem a bit difficult. Apple’s iTunes is very similar; just replace ‘apps’ with ‘media.'”
“By bringing iTunes to Android, consumers have one less reason to ‘need’ to buy an iOS device,” Eassa writes. “Indeed, if Apple brings the core of its software/service ecosystem to competing platforms, then how is it going to maintain such high profitability on its devices? Differentiating on hardware is nearly impossible, especially when iPhones typically don’t pack the latest-and-greatest, buzzword-compliant specifications. In fact, Apple intentionally goes with the cheapest it can get away with on the hardware side and then more than makes up for it on the software side.”
MacDailyNews Take: Total B.S. Apple offers the world’s only 64-bit smartphone, powered by Apple’s A7. Huge investments in time, talent, and money have been and continue to be made by Apple. That is certainly not going with “the cheapest it can get.” If you’re going to write something, Ashraf, try the truth next time.
Eassa continues, “iTunes, as well as the rest of Apple’s first-party software, is key to keeping its platform as ‘sticky’ as possible. In a world where anybody can put together a fast, slick smartphone with a gorgeous screen and great battery life, it really does come down to the usability and usefulness of the device.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As Day One owners of every iPhone ever made and witnesses to Android settlers shutting off their phones at 11am in the vain hope that they’ll be able to make it through the evening, we’ve yet to see a smartphone with “great battery life.” Get real, Ashraf.
If Apple truly believes in iPhone, then they do not need artificial constraints (keeping iTunes to themselves) to keep/lure customers in some desperate Microsoftian Office-for-Surface-only fashion.
Again, if Apple truly believes in iPhone, Apple’s iTunes and iTunes Store should be available for every widely-selling platform.
No, they would be opening the ecosystem to them. Fsck no
They might as well allow them to sync through iCloud and use the App Store. Hell, just give them an open source iOS.
So he’s criticising Apple for a ‘bad business decision’ that they haven’t even made. Motley fool isn’t quite as ironic as it seems in his case.
Yea, we saw how well that strategy worked for Microsoft by not bringing out Office for iOS. Apple makes a version of iTunes for Windows. They wouldn’t have done that unless it was a lucrative way to garner sales.
There are people who simply refuse to purchase an iPhone because of their own twisted view of Apple. But a lot of them would use and purchase music and video with iTunes if given the opportunity. I think it would be a wise decision for Apple offer iTunes on Android.
The only problem with your theory is that Apple is a hardware company whereas Microsoft is a software company. What works for one will not necessarily work for the other.
They’re both.
MS only success in hardware is the Xbox.
The only advantage for Apple to do this is to sell a few 99 cent songs. Maybe, iTunes for Android could do Movies & TV shows too, but that would require Apple implementing its whole DRM stack on Android, which would be a huge pain in the ass. They would probably restrict it to today’s newest Android OS’s, to maintain some sanity, but even then there’s tremendous variation in Android hardware that’s going to make iTunes DRM hard to implement consistently, and Apple would be missing over half of Android’s install base anyway who can’t update software.
Assuming it’s just iTunes music downloads, then there’s nothing “sticky” about it. iTunes music downloads can moved to any device – the only impediment is you might have to convert it to MP3 first for odd devices that still don’t support MP4 audio. Apple would just be doing Android a solid favor, adding a missing feature to the Android platform, and only profiting a few cents per download for their all their trouble. There’s limited growth in digital music download.
I think getting iWork would on Android would be interesting strategic move for Apple, really go after Google Docs and MS Office, going all in the cross platform documents game.
By putting iTunes on Windows, Apple erased iPod’s competition overnight. Same might happen to Andorrhoid.
That’s a false analogy. The more accurate analogy is if Apple had made the competition for the iPod compatible with iTunes. Regardless of whether you think they should or not, that’s the more accurate analogy.
iTunes on Android sounds like a great idea. The MDN take is spot on. Why allow other music distributors unfettered access to those millions of Android customers? If Apple wishes to remain #1 in music, they need to be everywhere. Hell, put iTunes on Windows Mobile as well. Apple has no reason to fear the competition.
If you keep in mind that Apple is a software company that makes its money on hardware sales then this tact makes very little sense. The vertical integration is at the core of its real and perceived value and helps to lock-in customers. Opening the software up for the sake of capturing small media purchases from under-informed consumers on a lower-tier platform (where many of its users don’t even realize they are part of an ecosystem) may offer some modest short-term sales but fails to bring a long-term benefit.
There are very obvious times that “crossing over” offered Apple a strategic benefit. Creating a Windows version of iTunes opened up a huge addressable market to the iPod and added value to Apple, not Rio, Sansa, Samsung or any of the dozens of MP3 player manufacturers of that era. This added short term sales from iPod, brought new consumers into the Apple/iTunes ecosystem and created a halo effect ultimately extending to iPhone and iPad. Creating iTunes for Android would be akin to Apple opening up iTunes for Rio, Sansa, et.al. a decade ago.
What a different Apple we would have today without the iPod/iTunes juggernaut that came out of adding Windows compatibility and creating arguably the most effective Trojan horse in technology this century. iTunes on android would be more of a Trojan bunny.
It’s simple really. The hardware market is much bigger than the content market and will likely be for some time.
While many of us would continue to use iOS devices despite iTunes being available for Android, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t.
Before discounting the huge advantage that iTunes is, try using an Android device for a period of time. I have a Nexus 7 and the biggest complaint I have is how to sync my library of content to it.
Why would Android users want this? One of the nice things about Android is never having to use that awful bloated and buggy software ever again.