financial/investor
03/22/2006, 10:40am, EST
Wednesday, March 22nd
French law to increase iPod sales?
American Technology Research (ATR) today commented on the new French draft law which threatens to open up iTunes to Apple's competitors, as well as Microsoft's decision to push back its Windows Vista operating system launch to January of 2007. "On the surface, this [draft law] appears negative for Apple, but we believe interoperability could ironically become a catalyst for driving more iPod units." Apple today responded to the French law, also proposing the possibility that its iPod sales could balloon as users freely load up their iPods with interoperable music, "which cannot be adequately protected." American Technology also believes that Apple has a superior product to other players, which will give the company an advantage should the French law pass the senate. "In our view, customers are attracted to Apple's ease-of-use, industrial design, iconic brand name, and competitive prices. Moreover, we do not believe Apple is that dependent on its iTunes music store as we estimate that about 2-3 dozen songs are purchased from iTunes over the life of each iPod, meaning most consumers get their music another way."
Responding to Microsoft's decision to delay its Vista operating system, ATR expects the move to hurt the software giant in the end.
"We believe near-term demand could benefit with buyers who were waiting buying current Windows XP systems now," the firm wrote. "However, we believe that in the second half of 2006, growth could become more muted as customers may 'pause' ahead of the Vista consumer launch in January 2007."
Additionally, the research firm believes that by delaying its operating system launch, Microsoft is giving Apple a head start.
"We believe the delay is positive for Apple, leaving it with less competition in 2006 in its Mac business."
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I still buy CDs exclusively - the quality options are 100% variable, the backup is always there & there is no risk of 'big brother' unilaterally changing licensing once the status quo is ITMS...
Since this is an obvious copyright and patent infrigment waiting to happen, why doesn't microsoft just become a apple licensee??
OS X is soooooooooo much better then anything out of Redmond these days and I'm sure that apple would have a whole division up and running to make new the OS X Vista play well with others.
Of course apple should resist buying out the infested microsoft with all its' troubles but it might be worth the cash to raid it and set it on fire, literally.
Oh, and all Apple would have to do with their iPod is support WMA (which would allow other store's music to play) and license Fairplay. This would deal with their concerns of all that music out there "which cannot be adequately protected".
And Apple won't be pulling the iPod from France. That's just stupid. They just said above that an iPod user buys 2-3 dozen songs, tops. So why should they pull out?
And --- the idea that an iPod user downloads only 2-3 dozen songs is totally false! Haven't you heard? Over a billion downloads!! That's 82 percent of all legal downloads.
So if this dumb law goes through, Apple simply stops making the iTunes Music Store available in France. They create a special version of iTunes for France that just acts as a music player and CD ripper. They keep selling iPods in France and they may actually sell more (as the article says). iTunes Music Store generates revenue, but not a huge amount of profit, so it won't hurt Apple to lose iTMS sales in France.
So this whole thing will have the opposite effect. Customers in France will have less choice, not more.
Hey, just repeating what's mentioned in the article above. Apparently the iPod and iTunes are not so tied.