Quote:
Originally Posted by
Orlando 
Had a quick Google and in 2004 Apple was estimated to have 92% of the US hdd mp3 player market. But even with just 80% it can still be argued that Apple had a dominate position.
Microsoft was convicted of using their dominate position in desktop OSes to gain an unfair advantage in browsers and media players by tying the products together. It was Microsoft's standard MO for years: add functionality into the OS and therefore drive competing products out of the market thereby destroying competition and consumer choice. It was this tactic that left us with IE6 as the biggest browser for years and since there was no competition Microsoft let it to stagnate.
In this case Apple tied iTunes and the iTunes Store to the iPod preventing Real from effectively competing. Who was going to buy music from Real if it doesn't work on ~80% of the mp3 players out there at the time.
In reality Apple only had about 56% market share of all music players. Apple only had a dominate share of in the name brand player market. But even at 80% of name brand players, it's a far cry from Microsoft dominance. Microsoft Windows was on over 95% on ALL computers. Including the ones with no name on it, store brand name and the ones consumers built themselves.
And the other factor is choice. With Microsoft, consumers really had only one other choice. And that was Apple OSX. But with the iPod, there were plenty of other choices (at the time). There were a least a dozen quality music players by name brands like Rio, Creative, Sony, Microsoft, etc.. Not to mention all the no brand name music players and cell phones. So even if Apple iPods had a dominate share of the music player market, they were far from being the only choice for consumers.
It wasn't the "tying" that got Microsoft in trouble with the DOJ. It was Microsoft demanding that PC venders pre install IE and not include any other competitors browsers with the PC's they sold or risk losing their Microsoft OS license. This was Microsoft abusing their monopoly in the OS market. When the DOJ demanded that Microsoft unbundle IE from the OS, Microsoft tried to claim that IE was integrated into the OS. Which was proven to be hogwash. Microsoft finally complied by letting the PC purchaser install the browser of his choice, with IE still being one of several choices included with the PC.
The other thing that got Microsoft in trouble with the DOJ was that they were sabotaging competitors browsers by rewriting some of the Java codes in Windows and not letting the competitors browsers programers know about it in a timely matter. Thus competitors browser were viewed as "buggy" and often crashed. Which cause many PC users to stick with IE.
iTunes is tied to the iPod. But not the iTunes Store. You don't need the iTunes Store to get music into your iPod. Never did. iTunes on the other hand is the software that managed and organized your music on an iPod.
You got to remember that back when all of this was taking place, online music purchases accounted for less than 5% of all the music purchased. 95% of music was still purchased on CD's. It wasn't until they removed the DRM that online music purchases took off. It highly unlikely that Real would have survived even if they had access to the iPod. iTunes only survived because Apple mad a ton of money selling iPods. Apple was lucky if they broke even selling music. And as soon as the DRM was removed from online music, Amazon had their own software that put Amazon music purchases into iTunes. With no complaint from Apple. Apple complaint at the time had to do with Real "hacking" Fairplay to get their music on to an iPod. Fairplay is the DRM that Apple wrote to comply with the Music industry requirement that online music must have some form of protection against piracy. Apple was also required to maintain it in case of hacking, so Apple did not license out Fairplay. Since it was much easier to maintain it if it's only on one player, their iPod.
