Consolidation continues with one of America's biggest tech companies. The Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple wants to deliver content through a vast network. Now it can and will.
The company has been busy setting up a content delivery network with Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast to get its content to users more quickly. A CDN uses several servers in various locations to provide media content to users more efficiently.
The network is already live in the United States and Europe, according to a recent report. Apple, in a strategy to go toe to toe with other tech companies like Amazon and Google, has had its eyes on content delivery for quite a while. It has made key acquisitions to position itself more strongly against companies with consolidated products and services like Google Play and Amazon Kindle. The company recently purchased Dr. Dre's Beats by Dre franchise, in an attempt to bolster media content from iTunes and streaming services included in the acquisition.
A recent Tech Times article points out another key acquisition that follows this line of strategic thinking, as the company recently also purchased Swell, a streaming media curator, for $30 million.
Apple wants transactions and updates to be less of a hassle, just in time for the releases of Mac OS X Yosemite and iOS updates/releases, as one report indicates. This means it will no longer need to rely on third-party CDNs to deliver content to Apple products/services users. However, the report also indicates that iTunes and iTunes Radio are still relying on these third parties. There is no word yet on when or if networks might stretch over to Asian markets.
Apple has been working on this project since at least 2013. It has not officially made any testimony that would indicate it's already using its own CDN, according to reports. However, experts in the field of streaming media and network administration confirmed the network through independent testing. They say Apple's capacity is tenfold what it was and that company likely wants to control the customer experience completely. It already does, other than delivery of content, as these experts have pointed out.
ISPs have also said that Apple has put into place larger capacity for content delivery. It would stand to reason that Apple wants to avoid problems with ISPs that others have had, such as the video streaming service, Netflix.
The new network would give OS X and iOS users access to their software and media with less problems and disruptions than previously experienced. Apple may not completely disassociate with third-party CDNs but they, like other tech companies, want to become less reliant on them.
