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Everybody's Targeting Apple in Digital Tunes, Video

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By Mike Wendland and Dean Takahashi

The "Great Apple Battle" has begun.

At stake is your living room. And your car. And your pocket or purse, where you carry your mobile phone and personal media player . . . and even how you get music and video on them.

After seemingly standing on the sidelines for the past few years as Apple Computer built a buzz through its iPod and iTunes music and video downloads, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and America Online all launched major salvos against Apple with a dizzying series of announcements last week at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"Over the past two years, Apple has clearly been winning the battle for red-hot buzz in the industry," says Pete Snyder, founder and CEO of the New Media Strategies consulting group. "No doubt, Gates and Company are sick of it. Now, they are taking no prisoners in their efforts to return Microsoft to its place as the Arbiter of All Things Relevant Online."

The opening shot was launched Wednesday night by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, who used his CES keynote speech to announce alliances with a wide range of powerful tech partners that will be leveraging Microsoft technology and new hardware to try to contain the inroads Apple has made in personal technology over the past few years.

The software and new devices he showed off in his near 90-minute presentation go directly to the core of Apple's momentum: digital entertainment.

Even the new Windows Vista operating system upgrade to the Windows XP platform planned for late this year had a hard-to-miss resemblance to parts of Apple's well-received OS X system.

The Apple assault continued Thursday when Microsoft President Steve Ballmer joined with Verizon Wireless to announce another far- reaching partnership, downloading and sharing music directly over the air to mobile phones that use the Windows Media Player and a Verizon service called V Cast.

It may just be the most significant challenge yet to Apple's dominance in the digital music arena with the iPod and its popular iTunes music site.

The V Cast service will directly download music to Verizon wireless phones starting Jan. 16. Those songs can be transferred to a personal computer, and music libraries already on the PC can be loaded on the mobile phone.

"We clearly believe that when all is said and done, the mobile phone is the device people will choose to carry around all their personal music," Ballmer said. "And being able to get that music by their phone on Verizon's broadband network is the way to go."

"We believe the key to this market is the 200 million Americans already walking around with a mobile phone," said John Stratton, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon. "The vast majority of people, we believe, don't want to carry an extra device."

Initially, some 500,000 music tracks from most major labels will be available through the service, with 1 million available by spring. It will cost $1.99 to download a song over the air to the phone, which can then be copied and transferred to the PC. For 99 cents per song, users can download directly to the PC by a home Internet connection and then have the right at no additional cost to copy and transfer the song to the phone.

Wednesday night at his keynote, Gates brought out MTV Networks' Music Group President Van Toffler and music superstar Justin Timberlake to announce yet another music download service, this one called URGE.

This alliance marks another front in the battle, directly targeting the dominance of Apple's iTunes Music Store. In yet still another hard-to-miss move against Apple Wednesday night, he held up a tiny new computer to be made by Toshiba that will run the Microsoft Windows Media Center operating system -- a version of Windows optimized for digital entertainment.

The machine will sell for $499, said Gates, the same as Apple's popular Mac mini computer.

Meanwhile, Google announced its upcoming of Google Video Store -- at video.google.com -- that will offer episodes from CBS' prime- time lineup and library, National Basketball Association games, Sony BMG music videos, news and archival material from ITN, interviews by Charlie Rose, cable programs and content from independent producers.

"It's the biggest marketplace of content that was previously off- line and is now brought online," said Jennifer Feikin, director of Google Video.

Google's flexible pricing model sets its service apart. Apple dictates all the pricing in its iTunes store, charging $1.99 for each video download and 99 cents for each song downloaded. With Google's marketplace, content suppliers can name their own price, from zero on up.

In another distinction from iTunes, Google Video so far works only on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows-based PCs and not yet on Apple's Macintosh computers.

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said that advertising would enable his company to provide free content to consumers. At the show, Semel unveiled a software platform that he said would allow Yahoo users to view customized content, including video, on Web-connected televisions and cell phones.

AOL's chief executive Jonathan Miller said that his company also would give away content to consumers for free on Media Center PCs and reap revenue from ads.

Whatever answering salvo Apple will fire to all this isn't likely to be heard until Tuesday in San Francisco, when Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs will deliver the keynote to the weeklong MacWorld exhibition, a sort of Apple-centric version of CES.

Source: Buffalo News

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