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Jobs' Invitation To Microsoft a Trap?
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Seibold over at Apple Matters, has written up an interesting analysis on Steve Jobs' suggestion that Microsoft make their own mp3 player. He argues that it is more bait than business plan, a deft move by Steve Jobs to lure Microsoft into a can't-win war. The key, according to the article, is the licensing of FairPlay." From the article: "The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure."
or a consumer could just stick with their own music sources that require no DRM at all. That's what I'll be doing, no thanks Apple/MS/anyone else.
M$ should continue to focus on software. Maybe an itunes-killer; let everyone else worry about an ipod-killer. There is still money in selling music.
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For some reason, FairPlay and PlaysForSure both remind me of products in dystopian science fiction novels by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson...
I guess that the truth is stranger than fiction.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They got in "trouble," but its quite likely that the benefits of doing this and killing the iPod would far outweigh any consequences.
This looks more like Apple leveraging on their near monopoly on digital audio players in order to bring their competitors down on their knees.
You know... like Microsoft leveraging on their near monopoly to force down your throat Internet Explorer, MSN, Media Player, Anti-vírus, personal accounting, etc...
Even though it's a sweet irony, it's just as bad. By the way, I know very few in Portugal who have an iPod versus other brands, is this monopoly only in the USA?
There is no reason whatsoever to license FairPlay, but the reason for this is not obvious.
The truth is that there cannot be meaningful competition in the field of online RIAA music stores because all the music comes from the same handful of sources. There is no way for the different stores to have a meaningfully different collection or meaningfully different price structure. Apple could license FairPlay as Microsoft licenses PlaysForSure, but that merely obscures the fact that the music industry is still in control of the entire process.
Given a lack of competition in the music industry, Apple opening up the iTMS would not actually create more customer choice; rather, it reduces Apple's leverage on the industry and we can assume that the music industry will keep the extra power for itself. Without control over the iPod, Apple has nothing and the music industry will force everyone toward things like subscription services, whole-album downloads, and probably higher prices.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
There is no reason whatsoever to license FairPlay
Of course there's a reason to license FairPlay - actually quite a few.
Firstly there's allowing your customers to play the music they purchase from you on the device of their choice, whether a competitor to one of your own or one in a market you don't support - for example a network media player (e.g. Squeezebox or Sonos) or a car-based player (e.g. Phatbox). Secondly there's bringing new customers to your music store by attracting those who, for whatever reason, don't choose to buy your players (say goodbye to Rhapsody, Napster, et al). I'm sure there are more I can't think of right now (income from licensing fees? Could be quite substantial in itself).
However, of course, these are not good reasons (well, not good for Apple's accountants) because as we all know iTMS (and therefore FairPlay) exists for one reason and one reason alone - to sell iPods. Anything which dilutes the iTMS/iPod coupling is bad for Apple, hence they will never license FairPlay. Don't kid yourself that Apple are keeping FairPlay locked up for your benefit, they're a corporation just like any other - their only driver is the bottom line.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Thank you! I'm very disapointed in this post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
I am a monkey. This is slashdot.
I call Bullshit.
How is anything an industry standard when only one company sells it? Even Motorola has dropped it from their ROKR phones. Something becomes an industry standard when an entire industry adopts it, and not just because the largest current player in that market uses it.
Even the claim in this article that MS should make their own MP3 player is bogus. By definition an MP3 player doesn't user FairPlay. It plays MP3 files. A FairPlay player uses FairPlay.
This is just badly written all around.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
... The folks who stick with Microsoft get to fight over, roughly, twenty percent of the market. The folks that go with Apple would be aligning themselves with what has become the industry standard. The players that license FairPlay would have access to the iTunes store, backwards compatibility with the songs consumers have already purchased, and a chance to compete on a perfectly level playing field with the iPod. It doesn't take a Stanford MBA to deduce that the potential rewards of opting to use FairPlay far outstrip the rewards of going with PlaysForSure ...
... Apple enjoyed a hardware lead and an application software lead when they mocked IBM's entry into the personal computer maketplace. Apple's computer lead then, and their digital audio lean now, may be more similar than many people around here realize. Basically, digital audio is only in it's infancy, as personal computer ownership was in the early 80s. As personal computer ownership became "mainstream" Apple became marginalized. The same could happen with digital audio, the bulk of the population is still not committed to any player/format. Microsoft could, I'm not saying will - only could, be the choice for the bulk of the population for a variety of reasons. One of which is that it is not going to be portable players that decide the digital music issue, it is going to be car stereos, home stereos, etc. Whoever get's their digital media appliance in the living room is probably going to be the ultimate winner. It might be Apple, it might be Microsoft, it will be years before the issue is really decided.
I own an iPod, I'd be perfectly happy to see Apple win. But declaring the issue already decided, that's just Apple's spin, and the wishful thinking of fans. This could turn out like Apple's mocking welcome of IBM to the personal computer business in the early 1980s.
Apple is not "really" the industry leader for digital audio in any real sense, only in a transitory early adopter phase sense. Calm down, hang on for a few lines
iPod's popularity may be transitory, we don't know how many owners are truly locked in by a large library of DRM'd iTunes Music Store (iTMS) purchases. Whatever people rip themselves with iTunes is not DRM'd and my understanding is that the vast bulk of digital audio is ripped, not from iTMS. Even if a person has DRM'd files that are not portable, the fact that they paid for the music lowers the barrier to their getting replacement files via file sharing, they are not really "stealing" in their own minds, they already "own" the song. It's much like people who in the napster days felt OK downloading a song they owned on vinyl or cassette rather than CD.