Evidence builds for Apple as music distributor

A report by Variety adds further credence to Future for Apple’s (FFA) view that recent events point strongly to Apple positioning itself to become a direct distributor of music, in effect, becoming a direct competitor of the big 4 music companies.

Apple began selling snowboard action video “That” for $1.99 on its iTunes store, which is distributed by Indie producer Forum Snowboards. FFA outlined 5 reasons why Apple may be preparing to begin to distribute music in its strategic analysis published February 17th.

Apple TV without HD equals the world’s largest iPod

With the shipping of Apple TV imminent, surely the necessary upgrade of the iTunes store will involve the announcement of at least some HD content?

Perhaps the most surprising part of the Apple TV announcements in January was the fact that an HD TV (or at least ED) is a prerequisite for ownership. This is more than a little unusual given that the media that can be purchased from Apple today is at best near DVD quality when in a 4:3 format and lower still when in the HD standard 16:9 format. That makes it look kind of okay on an iMac but is likely to disappoint once viewed in the living room.

iPhone price leak says more about research than prices

The recent excitement concerning the alleged leaked iPhone pricing from a market research study has got a lot of people thinking they will be saving themselves a couple of hundred bucks come June. Another bunch are up in arms over the poor quality sample advertisement that suggests that it is a fake. FFA believes that more likely than not the research is genuine but the pricing shown is not indicative of Apple’s / Cingular’s plans for the iPhone this June.

Apple to distribute music?

Recent announcements, two of them most notably from Apple itself, conspire to imply that Apple is poised to extend the iTunes store from purely sales to publishing too. FFA believes that Apple plans to enter the music publishing business in order to turn its growing iTunes store revenue into a profit center for the company. A direct relationship with artists should lead to at least a similar profit margin to the rest of its business if the music companies were disintermediated! The new settlement with the Apple Corps allows for Apple to enter this business.