Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Universal Music boss Doug Morris may be grinning from ear to ear on the royalty deal his company has struck with Microsoft on the sale of Zune players. However, if as suggested in a Reuters report he expects to do a similar deal with Apple on the sale of iPods, he must be dreaming.
There is a difference between the iPod and the
Zune - iPod dominates the market and Zune is a minnow that's just been
born.
Jobs and Apple have already done the hard yards and sold billions of
online music tracks through iTunes all over the world, while Zune
Marketplace has sold next to nothing in its only market the US. That's
why the combined might of Universal and its fellow music industry
heavyweights were simply crushed by Jobs when they tried to get Apple
to change its pricing model in their last round of negotiations.
The recording industry could not get Apple to budge on its downloads
pricing, so can anyone seriously suggest that Universal would be
successful in getting Apple to give the company a percentage of the
profits on its iPod sales? One can imagine the reaction of Jobs to such
a proposal. iPod is where Apple makes its money.
The strategy of Microsoft by complying with music industry demands for
a cut on Zune sales is obviously to try and drive a wedge between the
industry and Apple. That might work eventually if Microsoft succeeds in
getting a decent marketshare. However, right now Apple rules the roost
in legal music downloads and, unlike Microsoft, holds all the cards in
any negotiations with music companies.
The clear message for Doug Morris and Universal is that their best bet
of getting a piece of the action on iPod sales is to buy some Apple
shares.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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