[i_rooster]

"Apple has always been a hardware company. I think Apple will do things the Apple way, and Microsoft will do things the Microsoft way. I'd say the long-term factors all favor our approach."

Spoken like a great imitator, is what I say.



More here

[i_rooster]

Interesting response in /. to that article:
---------------------
Good quick read ariticle (Score:2)
by amichalo (132545) on Sunday November 14, @10:01AM (#10812792)
If you didn't RTFA, please do so. It's worth it.

I found many quotes interesting including this:

Mr. Jobs rejects the comparison between the music players and computers. The Macintosh had an uphill battle, Apple says, because so many corporate customers already had applications based on Microsoft's operating system that they didn't want to abandon. By contrast, Apple's iTunes Music Store sells pretty much the same songs that the others do, but they cannot be moved onto non-Apple portable devices.

This is the glory of the iPod/iTunes combo.

Basic marketing speaks of product differentiation and competitive advantage as keys to sales growth. In all the on-line music stores, the differentiations are:
(1) price for which there is either a .99/9.99 model or the subscription ideas which (some) people either love or (mostly) hate
(2) catalog which is by and large the same (at least for mainstream current music the labels want to sell) with some larger stores securing exclusives and international market access.
(3) format of encoding which directly dictates which devices the store works with.

Apple is so damn smart because they set (1) so low there is no margin in it for companies that just sell music only to compete, (2) is so big and robust that at best a competitor has the same catalog and at worst, a smaller one, and (3) locks all the Windows Media Format people into a "push" for product differentiation. This forces them to look at (1) or (2) and since their small market share will prevent (2) from getting exclusives that really means (1) is the only way to go. But as mentioned before, margins are too darn low so no matter how you slice it, they can't compete on price alone.

Which brings us back to that quote by Jobs above. If you start buying from iTMS, which 70% of the market has, it costs MORE to switch because you have comitted yourself to (3), the format, and you have to giveup all your music, and all those 0.99 that added up, to move.

Brilliant he is, just brilliant.

[demograph68]

Bono, U2's lead singer, said the band was not charging Apple a penny to be in the ad.

Makes me wonder how much Queen Latifah is making then for her "loyalty" to Microsoft.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by demograph68:
Makes me wonder how much Queen Latifah is making then for her "loyalty" to Microsoft.

Once you go black, you never go back.

[brapper]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Once you go black, you never go back.

ooooh captain double entendre!

[mdc]

no offence to queen latifah, but i'd rather have my company being backed by bono and the rest of u2.

[SafariX]

Originally posted by brapper:
ooooh captain double entendre!

lol,

[Zimphire]

[nredman]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Once you go black, you never go back.

*LOL* baby got back

[willed]

Originally posted by i_rooster:
Which brings us back to that quote by Jobs above. If you start buying from iTMS, which 70% of the market has, it costs MORE to switch because you have comitted yourself to (3), the format, and you have to giveup all your music, and all those 0.99 that added up, to move.

Of course the problem with this is that, although 70% of today's market may have signed themselves up to iTunes, you can bet that that is a small number of people compared to how many will use legal digital downloading in a few years. So it's not like Apple's got the market tied up yet; if they keep the same number of people downloading, but don't grow as much as their competitors, they could end up with only a small percentage of the market.

[olePigeon]

I think Apple's teaming up with someone for downloading games from iTMS onto your iPod. I think the iPod is gonna get even more popular with $.99 games.