iOS 9, Music streaming And All You Need To Know About Today’s Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)

Today is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California. Usually at such events, we expect announcements on Apple’s services and products. Apple now has a range of products which ranging from phones to watches. You can stream it live here when it starts at 1 p.m. ET/6 PM Nigerian time/5 PM GMT and you can only watch this on Apple devices which means you need to have access to Safari on your PC to watch this. So what do we expect to hear from Apple today?

1. First of them all is iOS 9 which promises faster operations with smaller uploads and better notifications. With the new software, we expect more refined updates on your interests as is obtainable in “Google Now” which suggests things like movies and articles on the go to you. Apple is likely to bring this in with its new iOS 9.
2. Yesterday Doug Morris who is the CEO of Sony Music confirmed that Apple would roll out is music streaming service to take on rivals like Tidal and Spotify. This service is expected to cost about $10/month. “It’s happening tomorrow,” Morris openly announced during an interview on stage at Midem in Cannes.

Apple bought Beats for $3b last year to focus very much on its streaming service. Beats has some catching up to do though as it tries to compete with Spotify which already has about 15 million users compared to a couple hundreds of thousands on Beats but again this is Apple we’re talking about. Apple has over $170b in cash and you can imagine what that money can do. In promotion terms, it shouldn’t be difficult to compete or maybe even surpass Spotify with time. Spotify has not really made profit but with plans to raise more money, it could compete with Apple’s streaming service.

On iTunes alone, it reported that there are over 800 million credit cards but we don’t know how many of those accounts really are active. There has been a decline in the number of iTunes downloads which could be a reason for buying Beats streaming service which is co-owned Hip-Hop mogul Dr. Dre. It is not uncommon to find big artists launching such services as is the case with Tidal owned by rapper Jay-Z. So promotions and collaboration with artists, Beats streaming service would record some growth.

3. The third thing we expect Apple to announced is something that hasn’t gained grounds in the African market yet, Apple TV. This is Apple’s TV streaming service and we expect some updates with Siri integration.

We’ll bring you an analysis of whatever is announced later today at the event.

Good day