As most of us know, Apple has done very well with both its online music service iTunes and its digital portable music player the iPod. However, Steve Ballmer chief executive of Microsoft has announced at a press briefing in London that Apple will definitely not have a chance later on when Microsoft will be the future of digital technology and not Apple as it is today.
He expects there will also be a growing demand for devices incorporating audio, video and other PC based features similar to a PDA. The reason he claims Apple has done so well is due to the lack of DRM enforcement in the Apple iPod series which means most consumers deliberately choose these players in order to carry mostly 'stolen' music rather than legally obtained music.
The main reason why Ballmer sees Windows DRM based players selling at a slower rate is that consumers think DRM protected content is difficult to work with. However he is assuring us that Microsoft will make DRM protected content extremely simple to work with while being difficult for the hacker to overcome the protection in order to copy the content. GristyMcFisty used our news submit to let us know about the following news:
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Ballmer described the growing home market for technology as a "tipping point," which could lead to a dramatic increase in sales for converged devices that integrate video, audio and computer technology. "There will be an explosion in demand," he is quoted as saying by silicon.com reporter Michael Parsons. "People weren't really sure where these new devices fitted in. At two hundred bucks, maybe, but at three hundred or four hundred bucks, it was too hard to bootstrap the device type." Illegally Copied Ballmer said Apple's home technology solutions do not have a chance at grabbing the lions' share of the market. "There is no way that you can get there with Apple," he commented. "The critical mass has to come from the PC, or a next-generation video device." Read the full article here. |
As Apple has done very well with its music service, I cannot see how Microsoft automatically assumes that Apple cannot succeed with video based content. Then again, this shows just how desperate Microsoft are trying to take over our home entertainment equipment. In my opinion, maybe Microsoft is using this new technique to falsely assure consumers that Apple cannot succed in a hope that consumers will choose Microsoft based products instead in belief that this rumour is true. Just when Microsoft claims iPod customers are carrying stolen music, what about the features Microsoft has taken from iTunes to put into its Media Player? :p
However, I think Microsoft has done well enough with being the main leader in with its OS, office package, web browser and many other software packages along with doing very well in other hardware areas such as the Xbox game console and having its DRM codec's approved for the next generation of optical video discs and portable players. The last thing I want to wake to someday is to find every CPU driven device in the home controlled by some piece of Microsoft software. :r
Source: TechNewsWorld - Music & Film
