I’ve been running iOS5 betas since they announced them in June. One of the things I felt iCloud brought to the table was a strong reason to increase the purchase of music through the iTunes store. Prior to iCloud’s announcement the iTunes store on my devices was an after thought. Syncing was cumbersome, and once I purchased something I couldn’t re-download it if it got ‘lost’.
iTunes Problems Solved
iOS5 solved these problems or promised to at least. The iTunes store now has my history of purchased music and I could easily download songs that vanished to my iOS devices. Pretty sweet! One problem solved – once I purchased something I could be confident it’d be easy to download it again.
iOS5 also promised to sync purchases instantly to all my iOS5 devices. This worked great with apps without me even realizing it. Downloading an app on my iPad resulted in that app being on my iPhone almost immediately. I revisited the iTunes music store on my iPad with iOS5 Beta 2. I bought a few songs to try it out. Similar to the app store the songs just ‘appeared’ in the purchased playlist on my other iOS5 devices. Buying a song on my iPad resulted in that song showing up immediately on my iPhone and in iTunes. I didn’t have to do anything it just happened.
Driving Content Sales
At first glance this might seem minor, but every week I found my wife and I revisiting the iTunes store, previewing music, and buying about 10 songs a week from the iPad. They’d immediately be available on my iPhone for my drive in the next morning and on her iPhone for her travels. There was zero effort involved. We discovered the 69 cent iTunes area by accident and now traverse it each week reconnecting with songs new and old that are on sale. $10 buys about 14 tracks which is typically what we spend. The amazing thing is how this all came together and drove us to utilize the iTunes store more in a few weeks than we ever had before.
Seamless Experience
The one click download, coupled with the content being in the cloud is a game changer for content. It will drive iTunes music sales, and increase them 5-10 fold from their current levels. Apps like Soundhound become even more useful because you can hear a song on the radio at a stoplight, have sound hound identify it, buy it from iTunes on your iPhone and have it everywhere immediately. This is the tip of the iceberg. iPad owners now have a stronger reason to buy an iPhone or iPod touch. iPhone owners have a stronger reason to make their next computer an iPad. iCloud will drive more iPhone, iPad, Macbook, AppleTV, and any other eco system product’s sales.
Changing Banking Forever
Imagine Apple taking the power of iCloud to mobile payments. You could buy something at Best Buy with your NFC enabled iPhone 5, have the receipt and transaction data in the cloud, then look at your iPad and review your account. PFM changes forever – Apple now motivates you to spend with your iTunes associated credit or debit card with your iPhone so you can instantly track your budget on any device anywhere, and get immediate feedback in a way that’s impossible today. All of a sudden Apple is your online/mobile banking provider and your bank is just a piece of plastic…
iCloud is the future
The folks at Apple had the foresight to see how this would drive sales of content in the iTunes store like never before and grow the ecosystem even stronger. iCloud won’t stop there and will make sure every device you own has every piece of content you own. Your digital life follows you around. Competitors like Google and Amazon don’t even come close to offering this type of seamless experience today but within a year they’ll make their attempts to copy what Apple has done. In the end Apple has again set the standard by which all others will strive towards. In the process they might disrupt a few ‘old’ industries. Hold onto your hats folks…fall should be interesting.
The Apple Core 