Apple PaaS?
I've been having a conversation among some of my colleagues here on the Azure team about Apple getting into the PaaS space. You may have seen this post http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-may-have-snapped-up-icloud-com/ about a new domain they may have grabbed. While most rumours center on a cloud based music service, I suggested that they may be pursuing an app platform. Why? Consider this: the App Store has delivered over 10 billion apps producing revenue somewhere around $2B per year. Now, Apple earns from various points of the app lifecycle: the hardware, the one-time app store purchase, e.g. But once those apps have been installed on the user’s device, most connect back to someone’s server somewhere – be it a weather app, or stock checker, travel reservation engine or what have you. That’s a major part of the app’s lifecycle and Apple currently derives no revenue from it. If there’s one thing Apple hates, it’s being absent from a revenue stream created by its ecosystem. If I’m Apple, I have my global content platform (powering iTunes and the App Store, software updater, and the like), so why wouldn’t I want to see all those app developers deploy their server-side code on my platform where I could charge on an ongoing basis? Otherwise, they’ll be going to Amazon or Azure or Rackspace or elsewhere. Have a global content delivery platform? Why not rent out some of it in a utility model to developers delivering apps through the same platform?
