Rene Ritchie had an amazing conversation with Brian Roemmele this week on his podcast Vector. Brian is a “voice first” evangelist who explained why he thinks that making Apple Music available on the Amazon Echo was a dreadful mistake. I agree with Brian and am glad to finally see someone else echo many of my own thoughts. I highly recommend that any of my readers take the time to listen to Brian’s forward thinking theories on the future of intelligent assistance. And how Apple just turned the HomePod into the Zune.
During the 2000’s, what made iTunes so powerful was that everyone was voting for it as the dominant platform by making their content available. Apple was still all about hardware revenue via iPod sales.
If we place Apple’s decision last week in historical context. Apple made a critical mistake by voting with their content that Amazon Echo will become the dominant platform of the 2020s. What were they thinking? Apple Music revenue is relatively insignificant and not worth the damage that they’ve done. Apple reaps no benefit in terms of hardware sales from their partnership with Amazon.
The current echo chamber theory that Apple needs to pursue service revenue because hardware sales are peaking is a theory built on sand. Apple services will always track roughly with the size of their installed user base. That means if hardware sales decline, service revenue will eventually decline too. The thinking that a bunch of Android or Alexa users will opt for Apple Services is flawed. Especially if Siri is perceived as the least capable of the digital assistants.
I don’t think that Apple is pursing this anyway. But this Apple Music availability on the Echo is a dangerous sign.
If we place Apple’s decision last week in historical context. Apple made a critical mistake by voting with their content that Amazon Echo will become the dominant platform of the 2020s. What were they thinking? Apple Music revenue is relatively insignificant and not worth the damage that they’ve done. Apple reaps no benefit in terms of hardware sales from their partnership with Amazon.
The current echo chamber theory that Apple needs to pursue service revenue because hardware sales are peaking is a theory built on sand. Apple services will always track roughly with the size of their installed user base. That means if hardware sales decline, service revenue will eventually decline too. The thinking that a bunch of Android or Alexa users will opt for Apple Services is flawed. Especially if Siri is perceived as the least capable of the digital assistants.
I don’t think that Apple is pursing this anyway. But this Apple Music availability on the Echo is a dangerous sign.
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