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Is Apple’s TV service bound for the Apple TV’s competition?
Just how big is Amazon’s announcement last week that Apple Music is coming to echo devices? It all depends on if you see it as saying something larger about how Apple is prioritizing its subscription services compared to its traditional focus on making money by selling hardware.
The cold war between Amazon and Apple seems to be thawing at last. Amazon’s Prime Video app finally arrived on Apple TV late last year. Apple devices are widely available on Amazon thanks to a new deal between the two companies. And now there’s this new wrinkle, in which Amazon will become the second third-party speaker vendor (after Sonos) to offer support for Apple Music.
The potentially larger wrinkle is the idea that Apple’s stated quest to rapidly grow its Services revenue line—encompassing the App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, and more, it’s been growing every quarter for the last few years—might finally have overridden its decades-long focus on making money by selling hardware with large profit margins.