Can you hear that sound? It’s the sound of rumours, speculation and anticipation over Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2011) next month in June 2011. Historically, Apple have used previous WWDC’s to announce new hardware, but so far the company has indicated WWDC 2011 will be a “software event not a hardware event”.
So what could they be planning to unveil next month?
Based on the pattern of recent acquisitions and a need to further re-enforce a competitive “unbreachable moat” around it’s iTunes and App Store offerings, I think that Apple’s ($AAPL) next move is going to introduce an “iGrid” service offering. This will be competitively differentiated from Google’s ($GOOG) and Amazon’s ($AMZN). Here are some ideas for what will be unveiled:
1. Cut pricing on the current “MobileMe” offering – to Free for all iOS devices that aren’t jail broken.
2. Introduce Cloud-based storage for iTunes, with a “master” version of your purchased music in-cloud syncing with all your devices and Macs. They may also include budget pricing for back catalogue titles.
3. Introduce an “iGrid” service offering. This will be competitively differentiated from Google’s ($GOOG) and Amazon’s ($AMZN) through offering not just storage space but also allowing users to run processes on Apple servers for not just “traditional” apps like personal walls, websites, collaboration portals, forums but also new offerings like software agents and persistent apps.
4. Introduce an incremental update to the iPhone 4, a Black-only iPhone 4S this June.
DISCLOSURE: I am long $AAPL.