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HP Licenses Apple's iPod & iTMS
grouchomarxist writes "According to the press release here and this article at Forbes HP is licensing Apple's iPod technology for its own MP3 player and use the iTunes Music Store. 'HP and Apple today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple's iPod, the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple's award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP's customers.'"
This is a pretty huge sign that the PC world is impressed with what Apple has done. From a company that clearly has the ability to enter a new market behind other market leaders and have success (iPaq PDAs), they recognize that they can't build something to defeat the iPod (unlike Dell's DJ move) and their best move is to join 'em.
Beter still, HP is preloading apple software on their systems. This will be a boon to Apple as it makes it even easier to access the music store.
With AOL, HP, and Pepsi all endorsing iTMS and the iPod, 2004 is shaping up to be a big year for Apple and On-line Music.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
how the hell do you respond to this? HP is the largest PC manufacturer behind Dell, correct? And Dell has its plans to do its own Music Store, correct?
So Apple, who has already made great inroads to the PC market, is going to make it in even deeper. I think this bodes well for Apple, and I don't know how even MS could fight this off, at least not without doing something that would violate the rulings or what not from the monopoly trial.
Of course, if they did do something that might violate it, and it wouldn't surprise me if they did and it went unnoticed, this time Apple might get into it...
Anyways, the only bad thing I can see coming out of this for Apple is the fact that it might stop people from switching to Apple computers, since, unless the marketing is done well, newbies might not realize this is an Apple product, not an HP product.
BTW, I didn't RTFA so feel free to flame me, but how will Apple keep the supply up? Is HP going to help manufacturing etc.?
Blake
Sounds like Apple is going for mass-mass production of the iPod/iPod mini players to get per-unit costs down. Having a guaranteed buyer for a significant portion of them allows Apple to produce that many units without having to worry about excess inventory on their end.
Look for Apple to either make more per iPod on the ones that they sell, plus the revenue on units that they wholesale to HP. Also, I'd expect the recent shortages of iPods to be a thing of the past once manufacturing is ramped up. This is great news for 3rd party equipment manufacturers (like Belkin, and th replacement battery sellers) as they get to sell more product, at possibly lower prices.
Plus, Apple gets more clout with record distributors when negotiating future rates (or trying to get hard-to-license songs) since the available pool of iTunes/iPod users will grow.
This is win-win-win, for Apple, Apple partners, and iPod/iTunes buyers/users. The only people this would be bad news for are Microsoft and the other WMA player folks.