On Tuesday, the Apple Group carried out the largest expansion of its services within a decade. Its music streaming platform, Apple Music, is available in 167 countries, an indication that this technology giant continues to focus on diversifying its income sources.
And this music service became available in 25 new countries, especially in Africa.
Apple also announced the expansion of the App Store, Apple Arcade games, Apple Podcast and iCloud services to 20 new countries.
Some Apple services are now available in 175 countries around the world.
This process would allow the global reach of Apple Music, the second-largest streaming music platform, to be enhanced.
This service had about 60 million subscribers last June, according to a company official.
On the other hand, the number of subscribers to the "Spotify" streaming music service available in fewer markets reached 124 million at the end of 2019, according to this Swedish company, which is the largest in this field.
For more than a year, Apple has been negotiating with production companies and music rights owners to suggest broader business options.
However, the expansion of these services comes in the midst of a crisis caused by the COVID 19 pandemic.
On the one hand, this has led to a significant increase in the use of entertainment platforms, whether electronic games or series, because hundreds of millions of people and families are staying with their homes.
However, Abersh Kumar, an analyst at Counterpoint, indicated in a blog published early April that "the demand for content recorded online has moved from streaming to broadcasting."
The right price
"In the most affected areas, people are worried, they listen to radios and watch TV constantly to follow the news. Television and radio stations experienced prosperity while the recorded surge in music towards the broadcast was stopped," he added.Moreover, Apple's new markets are not easy to reach. In many countries, the standard of living does not necessarily allow the expenses of the music listening subscription to be streamed.
Added to this is the easy online access to ad-free "free" music.
Proceeding from this, "Apple" decided to give new users a free trial period of 6 months instead of 3 normally.
The subscription price ranges from one country to another between $ 3 in Mozambique, Libya and Burma, $ 5 in Qatar and Georgia, and $ 11 in Iceland.
Counterpoint reports that the streaming music market contained 358 million paid subscriptions worldwide in 2019. The company expects the number to exceed 450 million by the end of 2020.
liquidity
"Amazon, Apple and Google are beginning to focus their efforts on this sector and they have enough liquidity to be strong competition for Spotify," Kumar said.The latest expansion of Apple's services dates back more than a decade, when it launched iTunes in 56 countries.
A while ago, the California-based group started creating an integrated environment for services in entertainment (music, games, series, movies ...), payment (Apple Card and Apple Pay) and news (Apple News +).
This environment allows them to maintain the loyalty of users of their devices who will be reluctant to change the brand of their phone, tablet or computer while adopting some of these services.
The revenue from these platforms will also help compensate for the slowdown in smartphone sales.
In mid-February, the group said it would not achieve its goals for the first quarter of 2020 due to the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 epidemic.
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