The WSJ reports that Apple has been quietly making major new investments in Internet infrastructure in a move which may simply be designed to boost the performance of its existing online services, but which could also be in readiness for its upcoming television product.
Apple also made a couple of senior infrastructure hires in September: Lauren Provo from Comcast and Jean-François Mulé, a former technology VP at a TV R&D company.
“That’s the starting point for a very, very big network,” Mr. Norton said …
Apple, of course, already shifts a great deal of data though iTunes, iCloud and the Mac App Store. Historically, it has out-sourced most of that to third-party Content Delivery Network (CDN) companies, with Akamai believed to be Apple’s key supplier, while StreamingMediaBlog, who reported the Apple CDN buildout yesterday, names Level 3 as another major supplier.
Apple building its own CDN would give the company greater control and would likely boost performance for streaming media in particular. This is the approach taken by Netflix, for example, which stores its video content in a number of data caches around the world to enable faster and more reliable delivery.
So the move may mean nothing more than improving the delivery of Apple’s existing services, but the timing is at least interesting. 2014 is the year for which Tim Cook has said that Apple has “some big plans” and “really great stuff coming.” A new Apple TV is believed to be one of the new products on the way, and building a large content delivery network would certainly be a logical part of the preparations for such a product.
