Microsoft, Japanese Companies Working on iPod, iTunes Killers?

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Microsoft and a total of 8 Japanese companies, including Toshiba Corp., Victor Co. of Japan, and NTT DoCoMo Inc. are working together to develop music and video distribution services as well as music players. The emphasis of the 9 companies are on the compatibility between devices, services and software.

The companies will develop a portable music and video player for the Japanese market, according to a Microsoft press release dated yesterday. The device would challenge Apple’s iPod digital music player, the best-selling device that plays songs and other media downloaded from the Internet or copied from compact discs.

Microsoft will develop the software while consumer electronics makers Toshiba and Victor, will make the portable device. Source: Bloomberg

Some of this fell out from the new Apple flat free program that replaced the “Made for Apple” accessory program.

The initial program was based on Apple claiming a percentage of revenue from all products that connected to an Apple 17pin iPod connector. In a move that upset Bose, a manufacturer of high end iPod accessories, Apple upped the fee to 10 percent after it had reportedly said the fee would be between one and two percent.

A Bose executive recommended that MP3 vendors running the Microsoft system join up to have a common port across all MP3 devices so that more manufacturers would develop accessories. Apple has the edge because it is the only media player provider that has a common port. Source: Apple Matters

We Say: Now there’s an idea. Come up with a common interface between all these devices and maybe a group of device companies, along with Microsoft can make a dent. Other companies have tried to buck the iPod juggernaut (Creative?) with little success, but iTunes is relatively new in Japan, opening in August 2005, so the window of opportunity is there, although it’s closing.