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By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 6 (Reuters) – Apple’s new version of its
iPhone and iPad software will not include a pre-loaded app for
Google’s video website, YouTube, Apple said on Monday.
YouTube is one of the most popular destinations on the
Internet, with more than 800 million unique monthly visitors who
stream 4 billion videos a day.
The move was the latest sign of the growing rivalry between
the technology companies the once were closely aligned but now
are vying for supremacy in the fast-growing mobile computing
market.
Earlier this year, Apple said it would dump Google’s mapping
software from its mobile devices.
“Apple and Google are the mobile operating systems for the
future and this is where the battleground is going to lie,” said
Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
“If it’s going to be a two-horse race, you certainly don’t
want to give the other horse any kind of lead,” he said.
Google, the world’s No.1 Web search engine, is also the
maker of the most popular smartphone software with its Android
operating system. In May, Google closed the $12.5 billion
acquisition of Motorola Mobility, setting the stage for Google
to more tightly integrate its smartphone software and hardware
and mount a more direct challenge to Apple’s iPhone.
Apple said in a statement on Monday that its license to
include the YouTube app in the iOS operating system “has ended.”
Apple noted that “customers can use YouTube in the Safari
browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the
app store.”
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the
company’s YouTube license included any financial terms, or on
whether Apple planned to replace YouTube with another
pre-installed online video app from a different company.
YouTube has been among a handful of apps that come
pre-loaded onto the screens of Apple’s mobile devices since the
original iPhone was introduced in 2007.
But the app, which was actually built by Apple using
YouTube’s standards, did not appear to be as full-featured as
YouTube’s own website: the YouTube app does not appear to
feature any advertising, and the catalog of available music
videos lacks many of the titles found on the website.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once sat on Apple’s board of
directors, but the relationship between the two companies has
frayed. Apple’s co-founder, the late Steve Jobs, was quoted as
saying he was willing to go “thermonuclear” on the search
leader, after it decided to position Android against the iPhone.
News of YouTube’s disappearance from Apple’s mobile software
came as Apple released a new test version on Monday of the iOS 6
software, which for the first time did not include the YouTube
app. The final version of iOS 6 is due for release sometime in
the Fall.
(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic with additional reporting by
Gerry Shih; editing by Kenneth Barry and David Gregorio)
