Reports have Apple in the final stages of a deal with the search service 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.
Όσον αφορά τον λόγο πίσω από την εξαγορά, δεν υπάρχουν ακόμη επίσημες δηλώσεις - ή κάποια επίσημη επιβεβαίωση από οποιοδήποτε από τα συμβαλλόμενα μέρη.
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 physically scan products such as magazines, books and advertisements to get additional information, such as Google Lens.
This could be a reaction from Apple to get ahead of features that are being prepared for the Pixel 2 that will uses too Google Lens technology.