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Apple tightens grip on digital music

5 May 2005 3:04 by James "Dela" Delahunty

Apple has tightened its grip on digital music as its iPod Shuffle device reportedly gained more consumer interest according to a report by the NPD group. Apple's share of the flash-based players market grew to 58 percent in March, while the company's HDD-based players remained at about 90 percent of that market. Apple's iTunes music store also still accounts for more than 70 percent of the digital music download market.

Steven Milunovich of Merrill Lynch called the numbers stunning and also stated that there is still more room for the company to grow internationally like in Japan where 60 percent of music players are non-Apple based. Apple and Motorola are also waiting to roll out an iTunes phone soon, but that was delayed for many different reasons. The company's CFO Peter Oppenheimer says that Apple sees music-capable phones as more of a compliment to the iPod than a replacement.

While Apple tightens its grip on digital music, record label executives get more upset, saying that the company has too much power over the digital music download market and is basically setting its own base rules. For example, some label owners believe that Apple's 99c price policy would be better replaced with a system that made older songs cheaper and made newer and more popular songs more expensive.

Source:
Betanews

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