Apple to Stream First Live Concert to the iPhone Tonight
Tonight Apple will produce its first-ever live event streamed to the iPhone: a concert by the electronica band Underworld. Apple has apparently kept the event quiet as it doesn't want to overwhelm the AT&T network …
Context & Ripple Effects
Tonight Apple pushes its first live event straight to iPhones: an Underworld concert streamed over AT&T's network. NewTeeVee reports the company deliberately kept word of the show quiet — a rumored, unconfirmed detail, but one consistent with the carrier-capacity worries that have shadowed the iPhone throughout 2009.
The experiment lands in a busy stretch for Apple: UBS analyst Maynard Um argues the iPhone is undercutting Microsoft and gaining enterprise traction, and analyst reports suggest Apple is developing a tablet. A single, under-promoted concert is a cheap way to find out whether live video belongs on the phone at all — before committing a product strategy to it.
First-order effects
- Underworld gets Apple's distribution reach for one night, while Apple gets a live stress test of whether AT&T's network can carry simultaneous video streams to thousands of handsets — reportedly the reason promotion was kept minimal.
Second-order effects
- If the stream holds up, network capacity becomes the gating factor on Apple's live-event ambitions: AT&T's limits, not audience demand, decide which shows get promoted loudly and which stay quiet.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward phones taking over live-event distribution from broadcast and venue channels, forcing device makers like Apple and carriers like AT&T to negotiate who bears the bandwidth cost — the underlying tension in their relationship this period.
The trend: Live entertainment is migrating from broadcast channels to handheld screens, with carrier network capacity setting the pace of the shift.