What about the new iTunes Match music service? It seems to me that “Match” is a copy of the kind of technology offered by an Israeli privately held company called CatchMedia, which has been offering this technology on a white-label basis for years. This Match service will effectively scan your local storage (PC hard drive) and “match” your music with what’s already available and stored in the cloud, so that it can be streamed to any other device without the need to first up-load it to the cloud, as with the offerings from Amazon(AMZN) and Google.
One difference with iTunes match, though: The CatchMedia technology allows you to “Match” and stream the content to devices based on non-Apple devices, such as Android and BlackBerry. Will Apple allow streaming to non-Apple devices? I didn’t see any such signs, but then again it could take this further and clarify this in time for the actual product launches.
For an example of a kind of “Match” service that looks a lot like what CatchMedia has been offering for years, take a look at Best Buy(BBY)’s new “Match-like” music service: www.bestbuymusiccloud.com. The Best Buy web site says that it is based on CatchMedia’s “Play Anywhere” technology. One kind of wonders what kind of patents that may be applicable to this situation.
If Best Buy’s offering doesn’t look suspiciously like Apple’s Match service announced today, let me know! The one obvious difference: Best Buy’s service also works on non-Apple devices such as Android and BlackBerry.
I think you are beginning to see a pattern here: Apple today announced that it is offering a bunch of new software and services that are catching up with what has been offered by Google (Docs, calendar, Android, etc), BlackBerry and also other technologies/services such as what looks like CatchMedia’s cloud music technology. These new functionalities will of course make the Apple platform much more competitive than it has been until now. Apple is already doing extremely well, so this can only be good for Apple as these services roll out during the second half of this year.
The second part of the pattern is: Most of these new services and functionalities appear proprietary to Apple. You can use them, but only on Apple devices. Perhaps there will be a few exceptions such as with MobileMe today, where there is a Microsoft Windows client to sync your address book, calendar, etc.
But largely speaking, until Apple shows that I can get all of these documents and other info also on Android, BlackBerry and other Microsoft devices — just to mention some of the more popular device platforms — I have to assume that Apple is effectively offering its Cloud services really almost only for its own devices.
Apple’s new Cloud services will be a good solution for many people. I’m of course a big Apple user myself. But many people want software/services products that maintain the functionality across devices based on all the other operating systems and are made by other hardware players. I want to access all of these iCloud services and information on my Android, BlackBerry and Microsoft devices, among others. Google and Dropbox have been doing this for years. And as for the Match music stuff, it’s already available from Best Buy using CatchMedia’s “Play Anywhere” technology.
