The four most dangerous companies after WWDC

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Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, USA on Monday. In the first day's presentation, the new iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and Watch OS 2 became the absolute protagonists of the conference. These three new systems will also be officially released this fall. In addition, the much-anticipated Apple Music streaming music service will also be launched in the coming days.

For Apple diehards, this press conference is undoubtedly the prelude to another grand festival. However, for some other technology startups, the content released by Apple at this press conference may greatly compress their living space in the future, or even threaten their own survival ability.

Let’s take a quick look at the four startups that were “most hurt” after Apple’s launch event:

1. Evernote

At the conference, Apple launched a newly designed built-in memo application for iPhone and iPad, which supports a series of new input forms such as drawing, picture insertion, hyperlinks, calling camera to take pictures, etc. It is obvious that this new notepad application will pose a huge threat to professional note application manufacturers such as Evernote and Microsoft OneNote series products.

In addition, according to the American technology blog The Verge, cloud note developer Evernote laid off 20 employees earlier this year, hoping to increase its revenue in 2015 and better cope with external competitive pressure.

2. Flipboard

At this WWDC, Apple completely broke up with the old newspaper and magazine applications and launched a new news aggregation application "News" to the world. According to Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of product management, News is somewhat similar to social news magazine websites Flipboard, Zaker or Facebook's new Instant Articles service. Through this application, users can subscribe to content they are interested in according to publications, categories and keywords, and these press releases will be converted into Apple News' exclusive news format.

It is reported that this news app can embed videos, photos, animated text and interactive graphics into articles. Apple said that the company will provide Apple News format tools to publishers of all sizes, from bloggers to media giants, so that anyone can upload their news content to the app. Currently, magazines and websites that have joined the Apple News project include The New York Times, Wired, Quatz, ESPN, 17 magazines under Condé Nast, The Economist, etc. Their articles will be rearranged and more pictures and video elements will be added to enhance readability.

Flipboard founder and CEO Mike McCue revealed that he is not worried about the threat that News will pose to the company's business because Flipboard is more focused on news sharing functions.

"Google once launched a software that claimed to be the Flipboard killer, Facebook once launched the news aggregation reading application Paper, and Yahoo also launched a similar news product. Now it's just Apple's turn," said McCue.

It is worth mentioning that there are reports that Internet giants including Google, Yahoo and Twitter have recently considered acquiring the news reading application Flipboard, and Flipboard seems to have been open to acquisition negotiations.

3. Spotify, Rdio

Spotify has been a leader in the field of streaming music in recent years, with more than 15 million paid subscribers. However, after Apple launched the Apple Music service at this year's WWDC, Spotify and Rdio may not have such a good time in the future.

Apple Music service includes music streaming, 24-hour radio broadcasting and a platform for artists of all sizes to communicate with fans. Users can not only listen to the songs they purchased before, but also choose to listen to about 30 million tracks in Apple's music library. According to Beats Music's practice, Apple Music will have a "For You" column, where song list editors can provide personalized records, new songs and playlists according to users' preferences and listening habits. In addition, the service also integrates the Siri voice assistant function, and users can use the service to listen to the top songs of last year in just a few seconds.

Unlike Spotify and Pandora, Apple Music does not have a free version, but only offers a three-month free trial at launch. Apple Music is scheduled to be officially launched on June 30, with a monthly fee of $10. The family package is $15 per month and can be used by 6 users.

Although Apple's dominance in the field of digital music downloads has declined in recent years, the company's influence in this industry is still self-evident. Specifically, Apple, which has huge cash flow, has sufficient product marketing budget, hundreds of millions of potential users, and more than 800 million credit card information. Moreover, Apple's release of this service in the form of "One more thing" shows the importance of this business in Apple's future.

Many companies in the streaming music space were not surprised by Apple's entry. For example, Rdio put up a "Welcome" sign after Apple announced the news, while Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's reaction was a bit strange because he posted a commentary on Weibo when Apple introduced the service, but then deleted the message.