Ballmer: &#39;No way&#39; Apple will win digital media war
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told invited press at a London briefing that Microsoft would prevail over Apple, Sony and other competitors when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of home consumers looking to integrate computer technology into their
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Handset-to-handset fighting Whenever a single monolithic company has launched against the globe spanning iTunes, Apple has been able to move the goalposts and push further and further towards a monopolistic market share of online music, but this week a genuine challenge has emerged, one that we are certain will dent the success of Apple, and we suspect that it will be reflected in the companyâs share price before too long.â¦
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To throw a spanner in the works of Microsoft&#39;s arrival on the digital music scene, Apple wanted to sign a strategic agreement with Sony, Japanese daily Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun has revealed, quoting sources from Sony.
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(InfoWorld) - The head of Warner Music Group defended the use of DRM (digital rights management) with digital music on Wednesday in an apparent response toÂ recent criticism from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs roiled the music industry last week by suggesting in aÂ letter published on Apple's Web siteÂ that the music labels are to blame for the fact that music from Apple's iTunes music store can only be played on Apple's iPod music players -- something Apple has been criticized for. "DRM and interoperability are not the same thing," Edgar Dorfman Jr., chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group, said in a speech at theÂ 3GSM World CongressÂ in Barcelona on Wednesday. "We believe in interoperability," he said. "Consumers want it and should have it. We at Warner, and I hope the rest of the music and content industry, will make it as easy as possible to achieve interoperability." Jobs said last week that Apple uses a proprietary DRM system because the music industry requires it to fix any failures in the technology in a short amount of time. If Apple shared its DRM technology it would not be able to meet that requirement, he said. Dorfman did not mention Jobs or Apple by name but his remarks appeared to be in response to the criticism. Apple hasÂ come under fire,Â particularly in Europe, for its DRM technology, which ties its music stores to its players. Apple isn't alone, however. Microsoft and Sony also operate digital music stores that require customers to play the music only on their own music players. iTunes is the biggest digital music store, however, and the second largest, eMusic.com, only sells music that has no DRM. Jobs also wrote that he would prefer to sell music without any DRM protection. That's a concept Dorfman doesn't think is up for discussion. "I don't agree that intellectual property should have no protection. We should all agree that intellectual property deserves some measure of protection," he said. "But that is distinct from the issue around interoperability." Today's music protection environment isn't ideal, Dorfman admitted. "There can't be so much protection that we create a poor consumer experience. We need to work to find perhaps a better balance than works today." Â
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You can file the media center's failure under "doesn't play well with others." Unless Apple opens up the device to other video formats, it's doomed to fall far short of the iPod's stunning success. Commentary by Leander Kahney.
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Last Sunday Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off this week&#39;s European tour by sitting down with a small group* of British journalists and dispensing pearls of wisdom, notably on the future of Apple in home networking (it has none, natch, says Steve).
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Microsoft  will not launch a  product that competes directly with Apple's  iPhone,  Chairman Bill Gates said in an interview with Germany's  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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That's the question that occurs to me as I read this piece in Roughly Drafted. It's about how Apple is kicking Microsoft's butt at the high end of the desktop market, and how Microsoft seems to be bumbling its way out of desktop hegemony anyway. Linux is mentioned only twice in this long piece, but the harbingery of the references are significant. Here's the enclosing quote: Combined with the dominance of the iPod over devices using Microsoft's PlaysForSure, the imminent goring of Windows Mobile by the iPhone, and the shift of support across the industry from Windows to Linux in servers, the days of Microsoft's monopolistic grip on the desktop are winding down.  Apple doesn't have to take a majority share of the desktop market to win, it only needs to take the most valuable segments of the market.  Once that happens, Microsoft will be forced to choose whether it wants to battle Mac OS X for control of the slick consumer desktop, or repurpose Windows as a cheaper, mass market alternative to Linux in corporate sales.  And, at some point, consumer sales as well.
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An analyst for JPMorgan Chase made headlines recently by saying Apple would soon release an iPhone resembling its nano media player.  One of his colleagues, however, disagrees.
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Creative has declared war on Apple, aiming to capture a 40 per cent share of the MP3 music player market. Part of this campaign includes spending $100 million to market its digital music players.
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Ziff Davis - Opinion: The player's success is not enough to pull Apple out of its "niche innovator" role. The company needs to take its knack for making products desirable in a new direction.
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Apple Inc.   Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday called on the four major  record companies to start selling songs online without copy  protection software to thwart piracy known as digital rights  management (DRM).
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made a surprise call for the end of digital rights management technology, which is designed to stop copyrighted music from being shared illicitly. Jobs says Apple would sell only DRM-free music on iTunes if it could.
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MacCentral - Creative Technology Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Sim Wong Hoo told reporters in Singapore his company plans to spent US&#36;100 million in 2005 in a marketing war aimed squarely at Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. "The MP3 war has started and I am the one who has declared war," Hoo said.
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Apple Inc. Chief  Executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday called on the four major record  companies to start selling songs online without copy protection  software to thwart piracy known as digital rights management  (DRM).
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Steve Jobs, Bono and the Edge Tuesday ushered in what Apple&#39;s CEO and the two members of U2 called a new era of digital music.
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The lead analyst of last week's JupiterResearch report showing a majority of music industry executives in the EU agreeing that a world without digital rights management would be a world with greater revenues, told BetaNews in an exclusive interview this afternoon that his firm believes a single, open, interoperable, standard DRM scheme would still be rejected by consumers.