Watch out Amazon. Apple is moving into your neighborhood.
The iPhone-maker reportedly is set to lease a large office complex building in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood that is also the home Amazon’s HQ.
Amazon has overtaken Apple in terms of market cap, and now it’s overtaken it in terms of brand value as well.
At least, that’s according to Kantar’s latest BrandZ list of the world’s most valuable brands — which shows an amazing leap ahead by Jeff Bezos’s retail titan.
Amazon just introduced a brand new Echo Show 5 that will cost you less than $90.
The more compact model can do everything its big brother does, and it’s ideal for desks and bedside tables. You can preorder yours today ahead of its launch in June.
Your Amazon Echo speaker can now keep an eye on your home while you’re away.
A new feature called Alexa Guard lets your speaker listen for signs of danger while you’re out. If your speaker has a built-in camera, it will also provide a direct video feed into your home.
Hundreds of Apple Watches were reportedly stolen from an Amazon warehouse. And the thieves didn’t have to break in to carry out their caper — they worked there.
Apple’s old frenemy Microsoft officially joined the $1 trillion club yesterday, taking its place alongside Apple and Amazon as public companies which have passed the $1 trillion market cap.
While its closing price brought it back down to $990 billion, it still finished the day ahead of Apple $968 billion. This came after Microsoft reported that revenue grew 14% in the last quarter.
Amazon is reportedly in talks with some of the world’s largest music rights holders to launch a high-fidelity streaming service, costing around $15 per month.
Rumored to launch by the end of 2019, the service would offer a superior bit rate than many rivals. “It’s a better bit rate, better than CD quality,” a source told Music Business Worldwide. “Amazon is working on it as we speak: they’re currently scoping out how much catalog they can get from everyone and how they’ll ingest it.”
Although a recent report indicated that Apple is spending about $30 million a month for Amazon’s cloud services, new information indicates that’s a considerable reduction from the past.
This is a result of Apple’s growing collection of data centers around the world.
As Apple increasingly turns its focus toward bringing in revenue from services and not just hardware, it’s depending on a rival to help provide some of the necessary infrastructure. The company reportedly spends $30 million a month for Amazon’s web services.
Apple has made it clear it sees health monitoring as an important part of its business. And now analysts from Morgan Stanley are urging the company combine its efforts with Haven, a partnership of Amazon and others hoping to improve health care while also making it more affordable.
But it’s not clear how Apple would benefit from any such collaboration.
Amazon just launched a free streaming music service for its smart speakers. This is further competition for Apple Music and Spotify, who are battling it out in the paid music subscription business.
This service could bring additional pressure for a free Apple Music option.
Spotify’s efforts to avoid paying higher rates is giving Apple Music a big advantage, according to a new report.
Apple is the only major music streaming company that isn’t appealing a decision to increase the rate paid to songwriters. As a result, Apple Music is getting all the love on social media.
Apple’s AirPods are about to get some fresh competition from Amazon.
The online retail giant is reportedly planning to release its own set of wireless earbuds that will be powered by its digital assistant Alexa and possibly better audio quality.
YouTube is reportedly canceling its original series just as Apple prepares to unveil a video streaming service of its own.
At least two of YouTube’s biggest shows have been axed, according to a new report. The service has also stopped accepting pitches for new originals as it drops plans to compete with the likes of Amazon and Netflix.
Five of Apple’s original TV shows have now finished filming, according to a new report. They have entered post-production ahead of the company’s March 25 event, but they’re not expected to be available until the fall.
Apple is said to be working on around six other shows that are still in production. The company is also developing lots more original content that is planned to debut in 2020.
In what would have been radical change a few years ago, your Amazon Fire TV can now stream songs from the Apple Music service.
This is the latest move from the iPhone maker to allow users to access its services on hardware made by rival companies.
Apple will hold its next special event on Monday, March 25, in the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino.
The “It’s show time” event is expected to bring a number of new services, including new TV content and a paid Apple News service. Fans have been eagerly anticipating confirmation of Apple’s next keynote, with rumors surrounding new subscription services circulating. The tagline for this one suggests it will focus on Apple’s upcoming video service, with hardware taking a backseat.
Every major music streaming service is joining together to appeal a controversial ruling that increases payouts to songwriters. Everyone except Apple Music that is.
Spotify, Google, Pandora and Amazon have teamed up to fight the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase payouts to songwriters by 44%. Apple is the only major streamer not planning to fight the ruling, causing some artists to heap praise on the iPhone-maker for its stance.
Apple’s “intrusive” executives, including CEO Tim Cook, have been criticized by Hollywood for becoming too involved in ongoing TV projects.
Agents and producers have complained about how “difficult” Apple is to work with, according to a new report. The company’s “nitpicking” has led to delays that mean only a handful of shows will be available when its new streaming service launches.
Apple has pulled all but one third-party SDK from Shazam in its latest update.
The move wipes out analytics firms, ad networks, open-source projects, and more — including Google AdMob, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, and DoubleClick. Only HockeyApp, a Microsoft platform for beta testing, is still available.
Apple can try to compete with Netflix for video streaming subscribers, but Barry Diller says Apple and others are “fools” to chase Netflix.
Diller, a studio executive turned tech entrepreneur, does not see any company gaining the number of subscribers as Netflix, which began building a base by sending DVDs of choice movies by mail.
Apple’s latest acquisition could give Siri a better chance at competing against Amazon’s popular voice-power assistant, Alexa.
Pullstring, a San Francisco-based startup that specializes in helping developers design, prototype and deploy voice apps has reportedly been purchased by Apple. The company’s platform helps create voice apps for Alexa and Google Assistant, and will likely help Apple make more tools for Siri.
The long wait for Apple’s TV streaming service might finally be coming to an end.
With a rumored March 25 event on the horizon, Apple is reportedly planning to launch its TV streaming service in April or early May, but some of the biggest names in the streaming won’t be part of the platform.
Apple is back to being the world’s most valuable publicly traded company once again.
The company’s stock price has been rising steadily since Apple revealed its first earnings of 2019 last month. Worried investors ditched the stock at the beginning of the year due to slumping iPhone sales, but it just passed Amazon and Microsoft today, putting Apple back on top.
Spotify is making a push to cement its self as the best audio platform in the world. The company revealed today that it acquired two podcasting companies and that it plans to spend big on original audio content.
Despite growing competition from Apple, Amazon and YouTube, Spotify is inching closer to having 100 million paid subscribers. In an interview on CNBC this morning, Spotify CEO Daniel Elk didn’t sound worried one bit about Apple and Amazon spending tons of cash to beat Spotify.
