I guess we saw this coming with the purchase of Lala in December. Sure enough, Apple is planning to launch a new iTunes that will be cloud based as early as June.

The ramifications of this and the coming tablet cannot be measured yet, but if the past ten years can be used as any indication, we can likely expect several interesting developments.

For starters, the shift to a cloud for iTunes means that it will become the most dominant third party service for obtaining music and movies. As of right now iTunes is the most popular distributor of music on the web with over 100 million accounts in over 23 countries. If you’re listening to online radio and you’re given a link to go to the iTunes store to buy a song, you need to install the software and create an account just to buy the song. Imagine instead a cloud based service that you subscribe to in minutes and can purchase the song with just a few more minutes, a much more convenient service that will no doubt increase Apple’s strong position as a major media outlet.

The all but confirmed Tablet will only add to Apple’s dominance as intermediary between the end user and the media they wish to browse. Reports are indicating that they have been working closely with magazines and newspapers to figure out ways to distribute their content via the tablet in a way that increases the appeal of said media.

Apple has also been working with EA to showcase the tablet as a gaming platform, as well as potentially a quality video player. The tablet is essentially going to represent a media interface that is sleek, portable and will likely offer a large wealth of cloud based services.

Of course it’s likely we won’t be reading the paper, but probably browsing our favourite RSS reader instead, and thanks to the large amount of real estate spent on the screen, doing so won’t be as bothersome as trying to read from the relatively smaller iPhone screen. Either way, Apple is positioning itself to be in an extremely dominant position.

The only thing standing in the way of this is Google. It seems that Google and Apple now perceive each other as competitors given that Google is now in the smart-phone market. Reports are coming out that Bing may replace Google as the default browser on the iPhone.

Given the strong positions of Google and Apple, Microsoft, now in a relatively less advantageous position than the other two, is doing what it can to increase its market share in the search engine business as it rightfully should.

Next week’s event could not be more hyped up, could it.

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