Apple Music gains more than 10 million subscribers in six months

Apple Music indeed seems to be a great success. The Cupertino giant seems to have raked up more users in its six month run compared to what competing services had achieved in six years. According to a report from the Financial Times that sourced details from people familiar with the matter, Apple has indeed done pretty well compared to its competitors in the music streaming industry. Spotify for example took six years to achieve the same user base, but you do have to keep in mind, that music streaming services were not as popular back then. More importantly, there is this bit about a worldwide launch (100 countries), that will certainly help reach those numbers. Apple launched its service at a time when the markets seemed matured enough and this not only applies to the US but to markets like India as well. While one can attribute plenty of reasons for Apple’s growth in the music-streaming business, Apple strategy indeed seems to centered around timing more than anything else. Still then, this is a strategy that could bring Apple to the top of the music streaming industry and also be the cause of the decline of downloads on iTunes, says Mark Mulligan, music industry analyst with Midia Research. Coming to the comparisons, Apple Premium music service is priced eerily close to Spotify. This was however not an easy start and Apple Music did have plenty of bugs most of which got filtered out in the next release of iOS 9.0 that bought a level of polish with a re-designed UI. But many would indeed attribute Apple success with music-streaming to the fact that most of the hard work is done by its deeply integrated Spotlight Search and its voice-assistant Siri. Still then, the bottom line remains that Apple was indeed a success. So what would be the tech giant’s next big move? Well, if the rumours turn out to be true, the company is looking to eradicate the 3.5mm headphone jack that has been a part of every mobile, tablet and laptop that it has sold in the past. However, the plan for now seems to be focussed on the Apple iPhone as 3.5mm jack seems to be a bit too thick for upcoming iPhone 7. So far, the rumour mill points to the use of Apple’s Lightning Port for delivering audio and even Bluetooth (wireless) EarPods, that will be a first for Apple.