Apple

[Grieve]

Netflix has no direct competitors and their sales are driven by having a good, pretty unique product.

I'm a Netflix bull, but I have to disagree with that. Amazon Prime is absolutely a direct competitor, and quite a bit cheaper than Netflix (plus many people have it anyway). There are also a lot of direct competitors in countries outside the US (particularly the UK).

Netflix is not a unique product at all - anyone with some cash can do a streaming model. The studios love competition - it drives up the prices they can charge. And when someone like Amazon has way more cash, and doesn't mind losing money to gain share, it's a problem.

What Netflix has is name recognition and a fairly large number of devices supporting them. In other words, a head start. Which Apple had too. I'm not sure I see too much difference between the situations, to be honest.

Pandora is similar to Netflix. We'll have to see how they fare when everyone and his brother (including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft) bring out competing streaming radio services later this year.

Don't have time to respond to the Apple stuff right now - will get back to it later today, if I'm not too busy drowning my sorrows...