Ryan Christoffel writes for MacStories, “In recent years, Apple has taken a variety of actions in the media space that seemed mostly disconnected, but over time they’ve added up to something that can’t be ignored.”
• 2015: Apple Music and Apple News launched.
• 2016: Apple Music redesigned; TV app debuted.
• 2017: App Store revamped with dedicated games section; Apple Podcasts redesigned; TV app adds sports and news.
• 2018: Apple acquires Texture; iBooks redesigned and rebranded Apple Books.
• 2019: Apple’s video streaming service launches?
“And the company is doing these things at a scale that is unprecedented,” Christoffel writes. “Once not long ago, Apple’s primary media platform was iTunes. Now, hundreds of millions of users consume media every day through Apple’s suite of spiritual successors to iTunes: Apple Music, Apple TV (the app), Apple Podcasts, Apple Books, Apple News, and the App Store.”
“No other company has the necessary base of both users and products – spanning hardware, software, and services – to build a media platform like Apple’s,” Christoffel writes. “And with future improvements that are surely in the works now – new paid services, better integrations of existing products, and the weight of the Apple media platform brought to bear on the big events people care about – it will be hard for any prospective media contenders to catch up.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll be impossible for any prospective media contenders to catch up.
The title is wrong, should be
“Apple is building a media platform that we will never see”
It’s funny yeah, none of that seems particularly exciting or world beating. At least not yet. MDN’s take seems more sarcaustic than realistic.
I see it as a complete mess actually. One app and or store for media and one for apps
Just look at the new tv app. It might work for some people but for us, we have a very large home library of media, it can’t even load it up. Just get errors everytime
When they can’t get something simple like that correct things are not going well
Of course we’ve seen this before, it’s called Amazon.com. They don’t have news or podcasts, but that stuff is trivial. They dominate in books and have a substantial music and streaming operation. Apple’s products might eventually be better, but then you have to convince people to switch, which is a lot harder than getting those customers early. I see absolutely no reason to switch to iBooks from Kindle, my third Apple Music trial in as many years is about to end and I see no reason to subscribe (Beats Music was better than this 4 years ago).
And they work across all devices…
It seems like wishful thinking to me, but Apple has to have some way of pushing out original content, so I hope Apple does come on strong with some streaming services. Wall Street is again boasting about Netflix ‘s unlimited subscriber growth, so why can’t Apple get some of that fruit. Apple doesn’t seem to be very hungry, but I can’t tell what’s going on in secret.
What the naysayers always seem to forget (intentional?) is that Apple is targetting every customer willing to pay its prices.
Apple’s media efforts don’t require the subscriber numbers of Amazon or Netflix (Google is already a has been) to be very successful.
Rent 3 movies from Apple and you pay more than Netflix’ unlimited price (that includes all Netflix original content).
Apple’s original content will be highly accretive to its rental business, which is already monetarily successful.
Tout Netflix, berate Apple, all you want, with only a 10% conversion rate one billion customers will ultimately translate to more than 100K subscribers. Currently, Netflix, with all its drek and a seven-year head start, has ~60 million paid subscribers.
Lol, building a media platform. What, in stereo? Because the Mac sure doesn’t support even surround-sound emulation. What do they expect to get out of stereo? Of course, sound is just an afterthought for them.
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The sad truth is that Amazon should create its own operating system and expand from their ongoing success in smart devices and the IOT to include laptop and desktop computers. In my experience, the Amazon model keeps working and expanding, and Apple shows no such coordination, lately. What has Apple done to impress us in the last 3 years? Nothing I can think of.