Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent predicts a backlash against Apple’s ‘locked-in’ ecosystem in the next three years.
Navin told Jemina Kiss at the Mipcom festival:
“Apple is a phenomenal company – we’ve hired engineers from Apple and know the caliber of the talent and creativity. Fundamentally Steve Jobs has challenged an entire value chain, whether it’s publishers or the consumer electronics industry. But Apple is only as good as the weakest link because that’s all forged and locked in together. If people stopped wanting iPods because a better piece of hardware came along, the whole thing would fall apart.”
Navin continues:
“We think the second phase of iTunes and digital distribution is not about Apple, but about the best hardware, the best content and the best delivery system – and that’s BitTorrent. We’re not hamstrung by a hardware business. We care about delivery and we care about content, and as long as there is good content in the world – which is guaranteed – we’ll be successful.”
Navin admitted that he always wanted to work at Apple. He ended up at BitTorrent, but perhaps he can try to work with Apple now. Apple is not ignoring the power of BitTorrent, they have plans to include a BitTorrent powered content delivery system in OSX.
