Report claims Apple offered Sony an iTunes partnership deal
Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs offered Nobuyuki Idei, chairman and group CEO of Sony, the chance for Sony to come aboard Apple's ITunes Music Store service, the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun newspaper is reporting this week.
The offer, which was reportedly made when the two met at the Sony Open golf tournament held in Hawaii this January, would have allowed for joint operation of the service, the newspaper says.
"Jobs is reported to have wanted to bring the Sony brand into the service to maintain a competitive advantage over Microsoft, which launched a beta version of its MSN Music store earlier this week."
Neither company provided comment on the story.
The offer, which was reportedly made when the two met at the Sony Open golf tournament held in Hawaii this January, would have allowed for joint operation of the service, the newspaper says.
"Jobs is reported to have wanted to bring the Sony brand into the service to maintain a competitive advantage over Microsoft, which launched a beta version of its MSN Music store earlier this week."
Neither company provided comment on the story.
Comments
Such a partnership would be good for both companies. Sony would have to come to terms with their marketplace failure, of course.
Have a music store and music player that integrates well with each other. What I think wasn't the greatest idea in their strategy was to make any song their software or their music player play is the ATRAC format. All your other songs outside of their program (MP3s, AIFF, WAV, etc) are incompatible and must be encoded into their format. Which I have heard can take awhile if you want to bitrate to be of good quality.
Why force your customers to only be able to play one format on your hardware is beyond me. It just makes it more confusing and difficult on your customers to use.
Even iTunes and the iPod will play MP3, WAV, AIFF, and also AAC files.
BUY THEM
spin off movies, TV production and music, after locking music into a VERY long term itunes deal
Keep hardware division, make PS3(keep the sony name on this) the missing link in iLife, thus smoke xbox2 and with ap-xpress, lock up the living room.
have apple-branded cameras/camcorders
KILL Vaio, strike new retail contract to put iMacs, powermacs, and powerbooks in their place.
Kill the whole tv/vcr/dvdplayer line, there are better and cheaper alternatives.
And give MEM STICK, A-Trak and minidisk a one way ticket to hell.
AND ONE MORE THING...
CONSUMER DIGIBETA CAMS...PLEASE...
Originally posted by a_greer
plan for apple: Wait for sony to tank
BUY THEM
spin off movies, TV production and music, after locking music into a VERY long term itunes deal
Keep hardware division, make PS3(keep the sony name on this) the missing link in iLife, thus smoke xbox2 and with ap-xpress, lock up the living room.
have apple-branded cameras/camcorders
KILL Vaio, strike new retail contract to put iMacs, powermacs, and powerbooks in their place.
Kill the whole tv/vcr/dvdplayer line, there are better and cheaper alternatives.
And give MEM STICK, A-Trak and minidisk a one way ticket to hell.
AND ONE MORE THING...
CONSUMER DIGIBETA CAMS...PLEASE...
Except for PS3 why buy Sony? Their only claim to fame is their now passé Trinitron TV's. Better Sony buy Apple at $50....total cost 15 billion (388 million shares x 50 - $5billion apple cash) and put Steve in charge
Originally posted by snipe
And give MEM STICK, A-Trak and minidisk a one way ticket to hell.
Don't touch my MD!
/Al