Ever since Apple bought Beats earlier this year, there has been much speculation over exactly how the company would integrate its acquisition into its existing offering. One key area of interest has been the Beats music subscription service, and it looks like Apple"s plans are now coming into focus.
The Financial Times reports that Apple will include the subscription music service as part of a future iOS update that may arrive as early as March. The report claims that Beats will be probably be rebranded under iTunes, and will continue to operate on a paid subscription model.
There are now over 800 million iOS devices in the wild, and it is estimated that around 200 million customers already use iTunes. Apple stands to gain massively by putting its subscription service into the hands of hundreds of millions of users by bundling it with a future OS update.
If accurate, the move would come as a severe blow to rival services, such as Spotify and Xbox Music, for which it would surely become harder to attract customers if Apple included its own streaming service as part of its OS.
Source: The Financial Times