We are at a time when sales of its best product, the iPhone, seem to have peaked and even started to suffer, and Apple has to face a new era in which hardware will continue to be of great importance, but in which it will be difficult to repeat the sales results of the last years.
With a user base envied by any company, and their loyalty almost more typical of a religion than a technology company, it's time for Apple to turn around its strategy and focus on something that can secure millions of dollars in revenue for the next few years: Services.
Preparing the way
It is not something new at Apple, which has been expanding its services for years to the point that its revenues have gone from being something almost anecdotal in 2013 (about $ 4.000 million per quarter) to constituting one of the top sources in the first quarter of 2019 with more than $ 10.000 billion. In just five years, income from services has almost tripled, and almost without realizing it.
Apple Pay, iCloud, Apple Care, Apple Music ... are businesses that have grown over the years, and that have been providing more and more income. But it is time to take a bigger leap and definitely turn to this business, something that seems to be what we see this Monday. There are 1.400 billion active Apple devices today, all of them potential customers of everything that Apple offers this Monday.
Apple Video, a new platform
We have been months, I would say even years, talking about Apple's streaming service. At the time, he already had to make the change with music on iTunes and make the leap to streaming music. Now it is the turn of the movies and television series. If Spotify makes things very difficult for Apple Music, the same will happen now with Netflix, the video streaming giant, and to a lesser extent with Amazon Video.
However, Apple's strategy may be different from that of Netflix. Apple could choose to become a platform that encompasses other services, rather than a service itself. Obviously it will have its own exclusive productions that are attractive to many clients, but it is difficult to compete with the large production companies that already invest billions of dollars a year in products for television and cinema.
The audiovisual market is constantly changing, and if a few years ago we asked for a streaming service to arrive in Spain, now we are beginning to have problems choosing which one to subscribe to. Content is fragmenting, including Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime Video and other small streaming services, in the coming years a few more will join, each with their streaming content. If you want to see Marvel, Star Wars or Pixar movies, you will no longer be able to search for them on Netflix or HBO, you will have to hire the Disney + service, for example.
Apple would become a platform on which the different services could be contracted, presumably at a lower price through the "packages", and all this encompassed in an application and a device. You won't have to worry about where the Game of Thrones series is, or where can I see the latest Tarantino movie, because all this will be centralized in the TV application that you can use on your Apple TV, your iPhone and your iPad, and soon on your smart TV. At least this is what those who say they know what Apple will present on Monday tell us.
News, games and credit card
Although it seems that the protagonist of the March 25 event will be the streaming video service, there will be other novelties that will complement this shift towards services. Apple launched its News application several years ago, and during this time it has been preparing its subscription service for this application. Pay a monthly fee that would allow you to access content from publications such as Wall Street Journal and Vox, as well as countless magazines.
Something similar could happen with video games from the App Store. A monthly fee that will allow you to access a selection of video games from different developers on all your devices. They say Apple would distribute the income to each developer based on how long their video games are played.
And finally, this Monday we could also see a new credit card in Apple Pay, but this time an Apple's own card. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, is expected to be at Monday's presentation, to present this new card that would be available only within Wallet, Apple's application for managing credit cards. Apple Pay is now available all over the world with millions of users using it every day, and why stick with just a small commission when you can have your own card for people to make payments.
Doubts to clear
All this seems great, but there are many doubts to be cleared that we will see resolved without any doubt in just over 24 hours. The main thing is to know the agreements that Apple has reached with the main content providers, not only for its video service but for the News application, and for that flat rate of games that they say they have prepared for us. But no less important is knowing the availability of all these services.
After a long time after its launch, the TV and News applications are available in few countries outside the United States (and one of them is not Spain). Launching a service of the magnitude we've described that is restricted to a couple of English-speaking countries does little good, only to frustrate users who order outside of those countries. The worst of all is that we have seen that movie before, and we fear that this will have the same end.