Video entertainment was “the one that got away” from Apple, but recent moves reveal the company is taking a second stab at the category, and that streaming video will play a major role.
The addition of video cameras to Apple’s latest iPhone and iPod Nano were just the first hints of the company’s new personal-media strategy. The company is also building a 500,000 square-foot data center in North Carolina, which could provide the massive bandwidth required for ubiquitous streaming video. And Apple’s recent acquisition of Lala suggests it’s interested in rebooting iTunes into a streaming service, according to Wall Street Journal. That means music, in Lala’s case, but the same infrastructure could be shared with streaming video.
The final piece of the puzzle was Apple’s approval this week of iPhone apps with live video-streaming capability. The company previously forbade this functionality, reserving live video as a private API. But a letter from an iPhone developer convinced Steve Jobs to release Apple’s restrictions, and now live video-streaming apps Ustream and Knocking Live Video are available for download in the App Store.
All these recent developments point to a significant new strategic market for Apple: personal broadcasting, or sharing personal experiences. YouTube and Flip are already big players in this young space, and the logical competitive move for Apple is to make personal media deliverable and accessible anytime, anywhere.
That means in the next few years, we’re likely to see video cameras with live-streaming software built into future iPods and iPhones (and the rumored touchscreen tablet, if it ever exists). These features will likely be integrated into iTunes, which Apple would convert into a social experience with real-time sharing services, in addition to being a storage tool.
It’s no wonder Jobs gave the green light on live video-broadcasting apps for the iPhone: He could use app developers to help Apple get started.
In a September iPod event, Jobs made it clear Apple was entering the consumer video market.
