Apple’s AAPL music streaming service has been gaining traction in recent times. The service, which has more than 60 million subscribers, has strengthened the iPhone-maker’s competitive position in the music streaming market currently dominated by Spotify SPOT.
Apple Music’s growth is expected to gain further momentum due its recent availability on smart speakers from Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) GOOGL division Google. Per a Bloomberg report, users of Google Nest Audio and Nest Mini as well as of other providers like Lenovo, which use Google Assistant, can now listen to songs from Apple Music.
Notably, the service on smart speakers using Google Assistant is currently available in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan.
Markedly, Apple Music is already available on Amazon’s AMZN Echo devices. Apple Music’s availability on Google smart speakers is expected to further strengthen market share. Notably, per eMarketer data, while Amazon is expected to hold 68.2% of the smart speaker market, Google is estimated to have 32% in 2021.
Music Streaming Growth to Aid Services Business
Apple shares (NASDAQ:AAPL) have returned 69.4% year to date, outperforming the S&P 500’s rally of 14.9%. The outperformance can be attributed to solid Services growth driven by robust performance from App Store, Apple Music, video and cloud services.
Notably, Services (22.5% of sales) revenues grew 16.3% from the year-ago quarter to $14.55 billion in fourth-quarter fiscal 2020.
Undoubtedly, Apple’s endeavors to open up its services to the likes of Amazon and Google will help it to compete better not only with Spotify but also Amazon Music, YouTube Music, ByteDance, Deezer, iHeartMedia (NASDAQ:IHRT), and SiriusXM.
Moreover, Apple Music service has been benefiting from solid content with more than 70 million songs. Notably, in August, the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company relaunched its Apple Music beta website to add a Listen Now feature that replaces the For You tab from the standard Apple Music website. The interface allows subscribers to stream their favorite music from their Internet browser rather than installing iTunes or the separate Apple Music app.You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Additionally, in October, Apple announced the launch of Apple Music TV, a 24-hour live stream of popular music videos. Apart from exclusive new music videos and premiers, Music TV will include special curated music video blocks, live shows, fan events, chart countdowns and guest appearances.
More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone!
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