Apple’s Eddy Cue Talks “Best Product Pipeline” in 25 Years, Apple TV, Beats Music, and More

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image via Re/code

Apple’s content chief Eddy Cue just wrapped up on stage with new executive Jimmy Iovine at the first annual Code Conference, hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Some interesting tidbits made their way out of this informal talk, as live-blogged by Peter Kafka from Re/code.

Here is a quick summary of some of the more notable points, written by Kafka and some extra details added by us:

  • Beats Music has 250,000 paying customers in three months, out of the five million people who have used the free trial; essentially a 5% conversion rate. In comparison, Spotify has 40 million active users (10 million are paying customers).
  • Eddy Cue dismissed speculation that Apple is buying “cool.” Rather, it represents an opportunity to create great products together.
  • Cue talks about how the TV viewing experience “sucks,” but addressing the problem is a hard challenge to solve. He promised continued improvement with the current product, Apple TV (20 million sold).
  • Cue: “TV is a hard problem to solve.” No global standards, lots of rights issues. “It’s a complicated landscape to solve.”
  • Cue says current product lineup is the best in his 25 years. Walt: Seriously? In 25 years? iMac, iPhone, iPad, Macbook, etc. Cue: “I believe the products we’ve got coming are great.”
  • Iovine opts not to reveal which company courted the other in the Apple-Beats deal, noting “I’m at Apple now. I can’t say anything.” Iovine says he has left the music business and has travelled up to Cupertino 10 times this year.
  • Beats branding deal with HP will end soon.

Stay tuned to Re/code for the video of the interview, which will bring this all to life. Essentially, Cue stuck to his game plan and reiterated points from today’s press release and didn’t reveal anything. Iovine sounds to have made a decent splash on stage, but if you already watched his previous interview from last year, this probably doesn’t come as a surprise.

Cue has really set expectations high by stating this year’s coming product line up is the best he’s seen in 25 years. We sure hope can deliver after making such a bold statement, but like he replied to Mossberge, he says the new products coming “are great”. Can’t wait to see what’s new in the product pipeline…iWatch? iTV?

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