Apple surrenders its huge podcasting lead to YouTube and Spotify
Why’s it called “podcasting?” Because it’s a blend of “iPod” and “broadcast.” Despite being named after an Apple product, and despite Apple having a huge lead in podcasting, the company has nevertheless fallen behind rivals YouTube and Spotify. Huge lead squandered. It’s shades of Siri, sadly. ‘Tis good for Apple employees’ ears that Steve Jobs is dead. He’d demand better performance.
A players attract A players. B players attract C players… A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. – Steve Jobs
Ashley Carman for Bloomberg News:
Apple Inc. popularized the concept of podcasts in 2005 when Steve Jobs announced the company would support the audio format in iTunes, its pioneering music and media platform.
Despite Apple’s long lead, Spotify Technology SA. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube have now become the most popular places to listen to podcasts.
A study published last month, from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights, shows YouTube — a traditionally visual platform — as the most popular podcast listening platform in the US, with 31% of respondents saying they use it. It’s followed by Spotify at 21% and Apple at 12%.
MacDailyNews Take: Tim Cook’s Apple was late, yet again skating to where the puck was instead of where it would be, with podcast subscriptions (not until 2021) and a web app so that other platforms (Android, Windows) could access Apple Podcasts (two days ago ).
You know, some people get upset when we point out that Tim Cook is a boring, reactive caretaker who’s not really the best person to be running Apple today or for at least the past several years.
Operations manager Cook should have been a 3-5 year stopgap after Steve Jobs’ untimely passing, running the iteration playbook, providing continuity for the company while it found a real CEO. Instead, he hung on — and keeps hanging on — well past his sell-by date.
Sigh.
You can be upset with us for having the temerity to call it like we see it, but the fact remains that Apple would be doing significantly better today with a visionary who’d have seen AI on the horizon, who’d have recognized the intrinsic importance of Siri and therefore invested in it instead of criminally neglecting it, and who wouldn’t have squandered the company’s gigantic leads in things like personal assistants and podcasting.
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