Appleof (AAPL – Free Report), the music streaming service has gained traction in recent times. The service, which has more than 60 million subscribers, has bolstered the iPhone maker’s competitive position in the currently dominated music streaming market. Spotify (SQUARE – Free report).
Apple Music’s growth is expected to accelerate due to its recent availability on smart speakers from Alphabet (GOOGL – Free report) Google division. According to a Bloomberg report, users of Google Nest Audio and Nest Mini as well as other providers like Lenovo, which use Google Assistant, can now listen to songs from Apple Music.
Notably, the smart speaker service using Google Assistant is currently available in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan.
It should be noted that Apple Music is already available on Amazonof (AMZN – Free report) Echo devices. The availability of Apple Music on Google’s smart speakers is expected to further boost market share. Notably, according to data from eMarketer, while Amazon is expected to hold 68.2% of the smart speaker market, Google would hold 32% in 2021.
Music Streaming Growth to Aid Services Business
Apple stocks have returned 69.4% year-to-date, outperforming the S&P 500 rally by 14.9%. The outperformance can be attributed to strong service growth driven by robust performance from the App Store, Apple Music, video and cloud services.
Notably, service revenues (22.5% of sales) increased 16.3% from the last year quarter to reach $ 14.55 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020.
Without a doubt, Apple’s efforts to open up its services to Amazon and Google will help it compete better not only with Spotify but also with Amazon Music, YouTube Music, ByteDance, Deezer, iHeartMedia, and SiriusXM.
In addition, the Apple Music service has enjoyed solid content with over 70 million songs. Notably, in August, Zacks Rank # 3 (Hold) company relaunched their Apple Music beta website to add a Listen Now feature that replaces the For You tab on the standard Apple Music website. The interface allows subscribers to stream their favorite music from their internet browser rather than installing iTunes or the separate Apple Music app.You can see the full list of current Zacks # 1 Rank (Strong Buy) stock here .
Additionally, in October, Apple announced the launch of Apple Music TV, a 24-hour live stream of popular music videos. Along with new music videos and exclusive premieres, Music TV will feature music video blocks, live shows, fan events, countdowns and guest appearances.
More news: it’s bigger than the iPhone!
It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple has sold barely 1 billion iPhones in 10 years, but a new breakthrough is expected to generate over 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a market of $ 1.7 trillion.
Zacks has just published a special report that highlights this rapidly emerging phenomenon and 6 tickers to take advantage of it. If you don’t buy now, you could get started in 2021.
Click here for the 6 professions >>
