Reports want Apple to be in the final stages of a deal with it service εύρεσης musics Shazam.
According to initial reports from TechCrunch, the deal could be formally announced on Monday. If it does eventually, the redemption price will be about 400 million dollars, a number that confirmed and Recode a bit later. This means a significant discount for a business worth about 1 billion dollars.
Shazam, since the foundation of 2002, has accumulated at least 140 million dollars.
Reports on the acquisition of the company follow previous rumors about Snapchat. Snap made a deal late last year that allowed Snapchatters to use the Shazam service to find song artists through the app. In the end, however, Apple seems to have won. It is currently unclear whether the new agreement will affect these earlier agreements.
As for the reason behind the acquisition, there are no official statements yet - or any official confirmation from either party.
From Apple's perspective, the benefits will be a lot. The most obvious profit for Apple, although it looks small for the size of a company like Apple, is that it will no longer give commissions to users sent to iTunes to buy music through the service.
However, a more tangible benefit could be in the form of additional pressure on competing services such as Spotify and Google Play Music. According to a publication by Wall Street Journal, Shazam sends about one million clicks a day to Spotify only.
And as The Verge pointed out, the biggest benefits can be related to the augmented reality technology being developed by the Shazam platform.
Earlier this year the company launched an AR platform based on a technology it introduced in 2015. The technology allows users to scan physical products such as magazines, books and advertisements to get additional information, such as Google Lens.
This could be an Apple reaction to anticipate features that are being prepared for Pixel 2 that will be using Google Lens very much.
