This blog was inspired by a couple of events, one of which I’ll write about here, the other I’ll cover in my next posting.
Although there has certainly been a lot of interest in the music space around Apple’s acquisition of LaLa (reported in the press at around $85M – certainly a decent exit), little is being said about what happens next.
The losers (rumors say Google and Nokia, perhaps others) in the LaLa bidding need to figure out their next move. They must figure it out soon. Apple is preparing to take consumer cloud computing to the masses, and they are going to do it on the back of the dominant iTunes platform, and with the LaLa acquistion, they are going to do it faster than anyone had previously imagined.
Apple’s competitors have at the latest until next Christmas before Apple makes yet another big leap in the consumer experience. What is most astonishing is that they haven’t moved even sooner.
MobileMe hasn’t been a huge success for Apple, but they are about to improve it dramatically by combining it with LaLa to create what consumers really want… not just cloud storage, but a fully cloud-based media experience.
It’s an exciting time for anyone working in the cloud + media space. Apple is about to drive an entire media industry to the cloud.
-bw
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Apple continues to impress me. Almost said amaze, but no, they’ve always been about quality, it’s cool. What’s impressive is their alignment of products and development to business value. They do it better than almost every company. Some of my clients try to do it not at all. (Which leads to the question … What are those guys thinking?)