Who Is Apple’s Latest Competitor in the Music Streaming Segment?

Tencent (TCEHY), China’s (FXI) Internet heavyweight, is looking to expand its music and live-streaming business in Asia. That will increase competition for established players such as Apple (AAPL), Spotify, and Pandora (P). Tencent, valued at $228.0 billion, is one of Asia’s largest companies. In July 2016, Tencent acquire China Music for $2.7 billion to become the country’s largest music-streaming provider.

According to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., music streaming users in Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, are expected to rise from 47.0 million in 2015 to 87.0 million in 2020.

Apple Music now has more than 20.0 million subscribers since its launch in June 2015. Spotify took more than seven years to reach that figure. Apple had 13.0 million subscribers just ten months after it launched and 15.0 million in June 2016. In 2016, Apple’s paying subscribers were more than 10.0 million.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said, “We can’t forget that, as an industry, we still have very few music subscribers. There are billions of people listening to music and we haven’t even hit 100 million subscribers. There’s a lot of growth opportunity.”