BBC have reported that Spotify the online streaming music service have submitted their mobile application to Apple’s app store, and its success or failure could determine the future of the company. Spotify streaming services are available online free of cost.  And they have been working on a mobile version of its service for some
months, not just for the iPhone but for phones on the Google Android
operating system.

That would be an extraordinary move, laying Apple open to charges of
anti-competitive behaviour, and already Spotify is rowing back from
last week’s warning. A senior source has told me the company is now
confident that Apple will approve the application, as it has already
allowed other music services such as last.fm and Pandora into the store.

Of course the iPhone is still a relatively small player in the
global mobile phone market. Nokia, for instance, now makes far more MP3
players – in the form of music-enabled phones – than Apple, although
very few of its customers use them to play music. So getting a Nokia
Spotify app out will be a more important hurdle.

But convincing the music-savvy iPhone crowd that it’s worth having,
and probably paying for, the Spotify app on their phone would show the
world that the music service was on its way to discovering a business
model and a secure future. If the” app” flops, however, it’s going to
be back to the drawing-board.