Reckless speculation.

Wiley Wiggins has been posting quite a few noteworthy items over the last several days at his blog, News of the Dead. Explore some of those online viewing tips, for example. Two entries, though, are particularly worth note. The first involves rumors, evidently sparked by a looser-than-necessary translation of an off-the-cuff answer to a wildly speculative question. I went looking for the full story and found it at Macworld UK:

The newspaper asked [European Vice President of Apple, Pascal] Cagni: "Do you believe that Apple will one day offer movies in the same way that it offers music downloads via its iTunes Music Store?"

While reminding his inquisitor that Apple does not comment on future products or services, the European chief agreed that "it is, however, surely a good idea".

Nothing more, nothing less. At least that's the story so far, of course. We may be watching an ace PR machine floating a trial balloon. It certainly wouldn't be a stretch. If Apple could persuade the major record companies to sign on to iTunes, well, let's not forget that most of the major movie studios are clustered under the very same corporate umbrellas. And the foot's in the door; besides having the business world equivalent of relatives in the industry, i.e., Pixar, Apple runs the go-to site for trailers. That may sound very lightweight - trailers?! - but think about it.

If Apple continues to lose market share in the computer business to the point that it truly begins to hurt - still a very big "if" at this point, but not an unthinkable possibility for the hopefully very distant future - might it transform itself not into primarily a software company, as Steven Johnson once suggested in a piece for Feed all those Web years ago, IIRC, but into a distribution company? For the age of the "digital lifestyle" that's been on Steve Jobs's mind all these years.

To brush off another ancient artifact of almost pre-dotcom vintage: Wouldn't that trailer site make one helluva "portal"? The traffic is already there, its interest perked, just a click or two away from saying yes to a purchase.

Posted by dwhudson at July 18, 2003 9:49 AM