Last weekend, a German website called Mobile Geeks released leaked photos which apparently show Apple Music running on the Android platform. This comes on the heals of the hilarious launch of the “Switch to iOS” app that Apple published on the Google Play store in September, in which the community destroyed the tongue-in-cheek app with 1 star ratings.
But I think this episode is more than just a little bit interesting. Looked at another way, Apple is paying Android developers to tap into the Android market. What is really going on here?
This may sound crazy, but I think this might be the beginning of the end of iOS itself. The massive model involved in iOS development, steeped in layers of technical bureaucracy, is unsustainable in the long term. Android is simply much cheaper to develop on, and much cheaper to build hardware for. Moreover the talent pool is cheaper.
Apple is full of smart people who know the days of Apple being the darling of the mobile market are coming to an end. This is a first dip into the waters of a different model. What else is Apple working on?
