James Delahunty
31 Jan 2007 15:59
Napster hopes that consumer attitudes towards music rental services will change when more suers turn to phones that also act as multimedia devices. So far, Apple Computer's iTunes has held back competition in the online music download market because the company's iPod (the biggest selling MP3 player) can only play music from the iTunes store.
Napster Chief Executive Chris Gorog told Reuters that Apple's approach was "anti-consumer". He believes that as more users turn to mobile phones for music playback, the access to a wider market will make them aware of the benefits of unlimited music subscription services.
"The key obstacle to date to moving into mass adoption for the subscription model has been the iPod which has had the very large majority of market share with MP3 players," he said. "But the dynamic that will be happening ... in this calendar year is the phenomenon of music-enabled cell phones."
Source:
Reuters