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Speaker 1: You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim

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Speaker 1: Fox on Bloomberg Radio. Apple in the spot line today.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the share prices down about one cent to

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Speaker 1: nine four six cents a share. But given the news

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Speaker 1: out on Apple today, you have to say, maybe it's

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Speaker 1: holding up pretty well. Apple's planning to revamp its music

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Speaker 1: service after the product was met with tepid reviews, and

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Speaker 1: it lost a fight to keep the iPhone name exclusive

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Speaker 1: to its product with a Beijing court. So a lot

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Speaker 1: of going on, and then there's more signs at the

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Speaker 1: smartphone market is sputtering. That's certainly not good for Apple.

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Speaker 1: Joining us now from our Bay Area bureau San Francisco

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Speaker 1: is it's also the home of Bloomberg. Point one I

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Speaker 1: might add is Alex Webb, tech reporter for Bloomberg News.

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Speaker 1: So Alex, let's start with the plan to revamp the

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Speaker 1: music service. Boy, oh boy, they certainly took a wrong

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Speaker 1: turn there. It seems it seems that way a year

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Speaker 1: into the products, you've got to maybe give some Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they've managed to grow it to the thirteen million users

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Speaker 1: that's about a third size of Spotify, but it took

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Speaker 1: Spotify eight years to get to the same level. So

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Speaker 1: it's not an outright failure, but it has potential to

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Speaker 1: be a hell of a lot better. And that's clearly

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Speaker 1: why they are working very hard to try and rejig

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Speaker 1: it and revamp it. And hopefully we'll see that well.

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Speaker 1: Our sources telling us we'll see that products surface at

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Speaker 1: their Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco next month. Alex

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Speaker 1: is there a tale, maybe a novel in the going

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Speaker 1: the coming and going of all of the executives who've

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Speaker 1: been involved in this music project? I wonder if you

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Speaker 1: could just tell us who the players are and Beat

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Speaker 1: and bring it all together so it is a wide

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Speaker 1: and varied cast of players. And that kind of speaks

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Speaker 1: to the very problem with the product that there isn't

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Speaker 1: one big figure dictating everything. You have. On the one side,

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Speaker 1: the iTunes veterans, people who built the iTunes store. That's

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Speaker 1: people like Robert Condrick and in the Apple l A office,

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Speaker 1: Jeff Robin, who was an engineer built the original it

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Speaker 1: tune store. And then they buy Beats, which was, you know,

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Speaker 1: three billion dollar deal. They bring in people like Jimmy Ivying,

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Speaker 1: a huge figure in the music industry, Trent Resina, who

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Speaker 1: we know is a front amount of nine inch Nails,

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Speaker 1: but have been heavily involved with the Beach live streaming service.

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Speaker 1: And then there was a guy called Ian Rodgers who

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Speaker 1: was sort of, I have some sources, really impressive guy

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Speaker 1: in meetings, great ideas, took on other people's ideas. But

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Speaker 1: the Apple iTunes people felt a bit flighted when Apple said,

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Speaker 1: look at these great people we've hired. They kind of thought, well,

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Speaker 1: we've done a pretty good job ourselves. And so there

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Speaker 1: was a certain amount of tension between these two sides

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Speaker 1: in the development of the product. So Alex quite important

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Speaker 1: is it that Apple lost the fight to keep that

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Speaker 1: iPhone name exclusive to its products in China, especially at

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Speaker 1: a time where suddenly people just don't need to upgrade

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Speaker 1: their iPhones the way they used to, certainly not in

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Speaker 1: the United States. That's another thing that's hanging over the market,

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Speaker 1: the stock market right now. When it comes to Apple,

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Speaker 1: I think, in and all of itself, it's probably not

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Speaker 1: a huge deal. You know, we're hearing Apple is going

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Speaker 1: to probably appeal this um, but it speaks to a

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Speaker 1: border trend and it was something that Carla can hinted

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Speaker 1: that when he announced that he had divested his Apples stock,

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Speaker 1: namely that things are not all plane sailing in China anymore. Um,

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Speaker 1: it isn't, you know, untrammeled growth market for them. They

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Speaker 1: are facing increasing problems here. We have the I phone issue,

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Speaker 1: the branding issue. A couple of weeks ago, we heard

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Speaker 1: that that movies and I books have been blocked or

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Speaker 1: they've been told they can no longer sell movies and

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Speaker 1: books through the iTunes store. So there's an element of,

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Speaker 1: you know, I think probably power play on the Chinese

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Speaker 1: side saying just remember whose boss. It's us. It's not you,

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Speaker 1: the massive mega company. We are the people controlling our

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Speaker 1: own market. Thank you very much for joining us. Alex

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Speaker 1: Aware but Berg technology reporter joining us from San Francisco,

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Speaker 1: talking about Apple shares of Apple down ninety seven cents

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Speaker 1: right now and twenty one cents