Jobs hopes for NBC

Apple continues to hope that NBC Universal will reconsider and sell its shows via iTunes. Following its Wednesday iPod/iTunes event, Apple's CEO said that he hopes NBCU will return to the industry-leading digital store. "We hope they'll reconsider their decisions over time and maybe find out that iTunes and iPods are a great way to digitally distribute their content to tens or maybe hundreds of millions of customers around the world," Jobs said in an interview with Reuters. Earlier this week, NBC Universal turned to Amazon's Unbox service after it decided not to renew its iTunes distribution/sales contract with Apple because of no pricing flexibility. While NBCU later insisted that its currently running series would be available on iTunes through December when the contract ends, Apple last Friday said it would not sell new network TV episodes because the contract was set to expire in the middle of the season.

Jobs also told the publication that there was a "lot more room to grow" for iPod music and video players.

The company on Wednesday said that its iTunes Store has sold more than 3 billion songs to date, and that iTunes is the number one music store in all 21 countries served by the Cupertino-based company.

Apple, which also released an update update to its iTunes 7.4 software following the event, has distributed 600 million copies of its iTunes software so far, according to Jobs. "We're pretty amazed at this," Jobs said. "We started with just 200,000 songs, but we have over 6 million songs in every single one of those stores," he told attendess at the special event. "Millions ahead of anyone else. We've become the number three music retailer in the U.S."

by MacNN Staff