Thursday, April 27, 2017

If Iovine has his way, Apple’s foray into video programming will be the start of another episode of world domination.

Mobile Video is coming.... everyone wants in on it. Wonder what they know.


I recommend the entire article at BusinessWeek

Like many tech companies, Apple long resisted getting into the content game, opting instead to sell other people’s music, TV shows, and movies and making money flogging hardware. Then Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. started producing award-winning television, and Silicon Valley smelled opportunity. Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube is funding dozens of TV shows for a subscription service and has built production facilities around the world. Facebook Inc. is starting to fund original video series. Even Twitter Inc. is buying the rights to sporting events. The tech companies mostly see entertainment as a good way to sell other products, whether toilet paper on Amazon or ads on Google.
Apple was among the first to use content to sell hardware. Steve Jobs, a passionate music fan, sold 99¢ songs to popularize first the iPod, then the iPhone. Yet his initial bet that consumers wanted to own the music and video they paid for was wrong; turns out people are fine just streaming it. So in 2014, Apple paid $3 billion for Beats Electronics, the headphones-and-streaming service company co-founded by Iovine and Dr. Dre. The goal wasn’t just to become less reliant on the iPhone, which generates almost $2 of every $3 of the company’s profits, but to make customers even more dependent on Apple gadgetry. The combination of iTunes, Apple Music, and a new TV app makes it harder for people to trade an iPhone for a Google Pixel or an Apple TV for Amazon’s Fire TV.

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