At WWDC Apple released some number and the numbers they released got me thinking a little bit about Apples move to not bring Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Apple TV to Windows. To start with Apple announced they have 900 million iPhone users and 1.4 billion active iOS devices.
Apple went on to say later in their keynote that they have 100 million users on MacOS. What these two numbers mean to me is that Apple only has 100 million users using both an iPhone and MacOS. That means that the other 800 million active iPhone users are using either no computer, ChromeOS, Linux or Windows.
Microsoft has over 1.5 billion Windows computers, so my guess is a lot of those iPhone users are run Windows. This makes me wonder why out of this huge userbase that Apple has on Windows would they not move over at least something like the Apple TV app to Windows.
I understand that audio content like Apples almost 60 million Apple music customers and podcast listers may not be something Apple is worried about since most of us do listen to music on our phones. Plus, Microsoft has been pushing Spotify really hard and actually built in an ad for Spotify into Microsoft Groove on Windows 10. So, I understand why the Apples Music app and Podcast App might not be a priority for Apple moving forward. But I think not bringing over Apple TV to Windows is a huge mistake by Apple.
Apple TV will not be web-based like Netflix or Hulu you will need to use an app to access the content so potentially Apple is saying you can only watch Apple TV on our devices. This move going forward could really hurt the growth of the Apple TV service that Apple has invested 1 billion dollars into getting off the ground.
While I understand that Apples 1.4 billion active iOS users and 100 million MacOS users are their priority and they should be as these customers are on their platform. If they really want to grow Apple TV outside of just Apple users, they need to release both a Windows app to target the 1.5 billion Microsoft users and an app for the Android platform.
If Apple wants to be a services company they need to worry about its users and users on other platforms like Windows, Android, and ChromeOS.