“Business Insider notes that Apple’s main CDN company, Akamai, has warned shareholders that it expects to see its combined revenue from Apple and Microsoft more than halved this year. Apple is the company’s largest clien,” Ben Lovejoy reports for 9to5Mac.
Over the last two years, our two largest customers in particular, comprise about 13% of Akamai’s overall revenue. As we look ahead to 2016, we expect these two accounts to still be our largest media customers, and they will contribute about 6% of our overall revenue… This seven point change in contribution results from their increased do-it-yourself, or DIY efforts. — Akamai CEO Tom Leighton
Lovejoy reports, “BI cites this as a further hint that Apple is gearing-up for its own streaming TV service.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is some interminable “gearing-up” process.
While we’re young, Apple. While we’re young.
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TV programme streaming from anywhere in the world please Apple – especially in the UK!
Not likely to happen unless it’s original content or Apple can guarantee the same money companies would otherwise get from selling the rights to individual countries (where they don’t also broadcast on their own channels). When things are co-financed by various companies in exchange for rights in their respective territories they’re not going to be overly excited if people just stream it from (for example) a US source and bypass them completely meaning they earn nothing from what they paid for. Personally I think Netflix have the right idea in making their own content which they then own and can distribute where they want on what they want.
I’m sure that Akamai mentioned what they expect their overall revenue to be, but changing from representing 13% of overall revenue to 6% surely only means a literal drop of the revenue levels overall were staying the same. Percentages aren’t fixed amounts. If they expected their revenue to double from new customers but Apple and Microsofts figures to remain the same then of course they would drop as a percentage. I’m sure the broader point is right, but it’s not summarised very well.
Yes I thought the same think so something of a potential exageration not knowing the answer to that.
Apple turned on their own CDN a year and a half ago, but I believe they kept their partnership with Akamai due to growing volume. All this means is that Apple has expanded their own CDN to the point that they can handle a lot more data on their own.
If Apple was going to push out their own streaming service sometime in the near future, relieving a streaming partner of some its duties is NOT a sign of that. In fact, just the opposite would happen, Apple would probably use even more of Akamai’s CDN to help offload what would be a huge spike in data streaming volume.