Apple Predicted To Become Most Powerful Media Company By 2020

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Apple's television is still some way off.
Will Apple become the top media company in 2020?

At a Techonomy conference today, two of the four panelists called out Apple as “most likely to succeed” at a session discussing how advertising could affect existing media companies.

While the session itself didn’t spend a lot of time on Apple, according to Techcrunch, the panel ended with an answer to moderator Dave Morgan’s question on predictiong the world’s most powerful media company in 2020. Digital agency AKQA’s Tom Bedecarre said that Apple would take the top spot, due to the several media delivery platforms that it owns or controls.

Another panelist and CEO of SocialFlow, Frank Speiser, agreed, adding that the time was ripe for a company like Facebook or Twitter to team up with Apple to help improve discovery, thus giving the partnering company a leg up in the media landscape.

Chief economist for Microsoft, Susan Athey, didn’t agree, obviously, but didn’t argue or add her own prediction. Instead, she laughed and ended the session on the pro-Apple note. Moderator Morgan opined that Amazon may take the top media spot in the next eight years.

The panel session itself focused on how advertising is changing, and how that will affect current media companies and the way they do business. Bedecarré discussed how one of his company’s large clients, Nike, has been looking for ways to increase engagement with its customers, saying, “We’re more frequently working on apps than ads,” which helps explain his perspective, then.

Apple, of course popularized the idea of apps, and is typically seen as the company with the best ecosystem for those little nuggets of content we all love to download and use in our daily lives. Apple also makes the devices these apps run on, and–if rumors are to be believed–will eventually allow apps to run on Apple TV as well, bringing the whole media discussion full circle.

What do you think? Is Apple poised to become the next top media company? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: Techcrunch

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