Apple’s over-expanding empire

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“Empire” (Image obtained via creative commons)

At their March 2019 Keynote Event, Apple revealed many of their plans for new products. This included things like: Apple News+ a more personalized news program, Apple Arcade, a new game subscription service, Apple TV+, Apple’s new on-demand streaming service, and most interestingly, a new Apple Credit Card. All of this making Apple’s Empire even larger.

Apple Credit Card, presented by Jennifer Bailey, the Vice President of Apple Pay, would function through the Apple Wallet and would use much of the same technology as it does with any other card you could use. The other services are also interesting, Apple News+ seems like a small change from their current platform but both Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade expand Apple’s domain significantly. Apple Arcade obviously by further monopolizing the domain of game entertainment like no other company has done, contrasting with Apple joining Disney, AT&T, and Comcast in racing to make a new streaming service to compete with Netflix.

And all of these companies, competing with each other over the consumer. Not anymore competing with other niche services but instead competing over the platform of entertainment, one consumer for all of the services, all of the services for one consumer.

Apple has been limiting competition by charging apps exorbitant amounts to use the App Store on ios. This hurts smaller business by making it impossible for them to access apple users. One company affected by this is Spotify. By requiring some apps to pay a 30% tax on any payments made through Apple’s payment service “[Apple] continue[s] to give themselves an unfair advantage at every turn.” Daniel Ek said, CEO and Founder of Spotify.

“In my opinion that’s just flawed business practices…pushing smaller companies out of the pool will erase the variety us consumers value” Junior Josh Brown said in reference to the competition between Apple and Spotify. Further, “a variety of smaller companies facilitates the growth of unique ideas, which can spawn a growth within the industry,” Brown said.

In just one presentation, apple offered services to almost every consumer’s entertainment want. Apple made consumer monopoly a convenience. Tim cook talks about being able to use all of the Apple services through your Apple phone and the audience claps. So that now you can have your Apple news, your Apple TV, your apple Games, and you can be an Apple Person.