Apple, Real, & The iPod.

This is becoming quite a mess. At the end of March I wrote this slashdot journal entry.

I think I'm going to have to change that opinion because since I wrote that entry a few things have happened: Virgin is now working in France to force apple to license FairPlay and Real came out with Harmony and their new aggressive ad campaign. And now Real is working hard to loose even more money with their half-off sale.

Of course, Apple has made its own positive moves, with the Motorola cellphone deal and the recent expansion of the iTunes Music Store catalog past one million songs.

All of these events have got me thinking that Apple is making the wrong moves. Apple is never going to lock up the entire music player market with the iPod. They may be able to maintain a high market share but they will always have competition. The iPod can't be all things to all people. There are already competing products with neat features which the iPod may never have.

Apple could however lock up the digital music market. All that would be required is sharing iTunes with the other music player manufacturers. Apple would truly be the Microsoft of music then and could maintain that position indefinitely.