iTunes Coming to Android? Negative, Ghostrider

I suppose anything is possible, but I’d put heavy odds against this ever happening:

Apple is considering launching its first Android app in a bid to sell music to users of Google’s software, it has been claimed.

The firm is also considering launching a streaming service to take on Spotify.

Experts say the moves could help stem the tide of falling sales for the firm’s iTunes store as streaming services become popular.

‘Apple has opened exploratory talks with senior label executives about the possibility of launching an on-demand streaming service that would rival Spotify and Beats Music, according to three people familiar with the talks,’ according to Billboard Biz.

‘Apple is also thinking about adding an iTunes App for Android phones, the Google rival that has been growing faster than the iPhone,’ the same sources said.

Anyone who takes this at face value has no clue how Apple operates.

Apple doesn’t have an iTunes Store in order to sell music, TV shows, and movies. Apple has an iTunes Store in order to sell iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macs. Until recently, Apple was happy running the iTunes Store on pretty much a breakeven basis, because the iTunes Store is part of the ecosystem people buy into when they buy Apple hardware. iTS now makes billions, but much of that is from the App Store. Naturally the App Store can’t be opened to Android, but Apple would still be happy for it to merely break even, because the breadth and depth of apps is another competitive advantage over Android.

Opening up the iTunes store — even if music sales are declining — would expand Android’s ecosystem, while adding very little to Apple’s bottom line. The iDevice ecosystem is Apple’s big competitive advantage over Android’s marketshare dominance. Throwing away high-margin hardware sales in favor of low-margin content sales makes zero sense.

This is a 99.999% probability of Not. Gonna. Happen.