Apple is looking to become a service company as well

Jan 7, 2019 17:21 GMT  ·  By

Apple and Samsung revealed during CES 2019 that iTunes Movies and TV Shows and Apple AirPlay 2 support are coming to 2018 and 2019 Samsung Smart TVs.

It’s difficult to figure out if Apple’s strategy is adapting to the needs of the market, or if the company is simply recognizing that they can’t do anything relevant on the TV market. Whatever the strategy, one thing is definitely certain. This is no longer Steve Jobs’ Apple. It’s a different beast that seems to be embracing the service aspect.

It’s also true that people haven’t really embraced Apple TV, and the platform is not performing all that well. Google, Amazons, even Roku are much better placed, so Apple has only one course of action left, and that is to make a deal with the devil. In this case, Samsung is Apple’s devil.

An unexpected friendship

It’s difficult to keep track of what’s happening between the two companies, and it’s very likely that they might still be in legal disputes right now. But that is not stopping either one from making money.

“With the new iTunes Movies and TV Shows app on Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung customers can access their existing iTunes library and browse the iTunes Store to buy or rent from a selection of hundreds of thousands of movies and TV episodes — including the largest selection of 4K HDR movies. iTunes Movies and TV Shows will work seamlessly with Samsung’s Smart TV Services, such as Universal Guide, the New Bixby and Search, to create a consistent experience across Samsung’s platform,” says Samsung.

It’s interesting to see that the integration into Samsung TV is pretty much complete, and it’s likely that now Apple has to pay some royalties for things bought on iTunes through the Samsung TV, and that could create some problems in the future.

It’s also worth noting that Samsung said that 2018 smart TVs would also be able to run iTunes, through a firmware update that will be made available. No date was revealed by Samsung or Apple.