Social video could be Apple's next big thing
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Apple doesn't want to miss the boat on photo and video sharing and is building its own camera-centric social app, Bloomberg reports.
The app remains in the preliminary stages and project managers are aiming for a launch in 2017. As it currently stands, the app will stand alone, but it might ultimately be integrated into the iPhone’s existing camera and messaging apps.
Apple needs to develop software services in the wake of decelerating sales for the iPhone, and the apparent fact that software is eating the world. In its Q2 2016 earnings, Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasized that the services business (which includes iTunes, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Care and its App Stores) grew 19% year-on-year to $6 billion and was on course to be a Fortune 100 company next year.
Meanwhile, Apple is likely wary by the challenge posed by Google, whose hardware and software initiatives are dual threats, as well as Facebook, which has grown its platforms into an increasingly formidable and fearsome ecosystem.
Apple’s redoubled focus on software and its plans to release a camera-centric social network has important implications for the technology industry:
The war between mobile operating systems (OS) and social messaging apps is heating up. With the ability to record video, apply filters and drawings to the media, and then send the content to phone contacts or push it to social networks like Twitter, Apple’s video-sharing app would resemble Instagram and Snapchat. At the same time, Apple's new messaging app slated for iOS 10 includes illustration features like animated images, stickers, effects, and tools to draw on top of photos and videos, giving it similar functionalities like other popular messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger and Tencent’s WeChat.
Mobile usage for young consumers revolves around their smartphone camera.Apple's social apps aim to appeal to younger mobile users, for whom photo- and video-sharing is at the core of their mobile usage behaviors.The company is therefore evolving the camera into a more central part of its mobile operating system (tapping into "camera as a platform") to safeguard its smartphones from falling out of favor with the next generation of mobile users.
Image- and video-editing technologies are also increasingly at the core of mobile. Taking, editing, and sharing records captured on camera are a primary way that smartphone users engage with their devices nowadays, and Apple’s video-sharing app plays straight into this. The teams behind Final Cut Pro and iMovie are developing the new video app, so the new app's film and edit functionalities could strongly impress. If Apple can develop an attractive platform around its camera, then it will wrestle user activity away from other social apps onto its own OS.
The ramifications for bringing mobile AR/VR to a tipping point. The mobile camera will be the main interface through which users consume AR and VR content in the near-term, as illustrated by Pokémon Go and the spate of smartphone VR headsets on the market. By emphasizing its camera app as a more central part of its platform, Apple will be positioned to both ride the impending tsunami in AR/VR content and help push the space further towards a critical mass. With this in mind, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that the company is doing "a lot of things" with AR.
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