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.
Apple finally looks like getting some real competition in the online music business with the announced entry of a collaboration between cable entertainment group MTV and Microsoft. A beta version of a new online offering called Urge will debut on Wednesday and will be integrated with the latest version of Microsoft's Windows Media Player, which can be downloaded.
The pricing model of Urge will borrow from both Apple iTunes and the
monthly subscriptions offered by services such as Napster, the company
that started the music download revolution. Like Napster, Urge will enable
users to download songs to computers and MP3 players for a monthly
subscription of $9.95 and $14.95 respectively.
However, mindful that the subscription model, which stops access to
downloaded music unless the subscription is maintained, has not eactly
been a roaring success for Apple's competition, the Urge service will
also enable users to buy tracks for download at the same price as
iTunes, 99c or Albums for $9.95. What's more, at launch, Urge promises
to have more than 2 million tracks available for download just like
iTunes.
Things start to get interesting when it becomes apparent that iTunes
and Urge are not compatible. Urge will not allow downloads to iPods but
will be compatible the myriad of competing MP3 players on the market,
such as the iRiver, which have not been able to dent the iPod's
dominance of the market.
The entry of MTV and Microsoft into the music market with a serious
offering may finally inject some real competition into a marketplace,
in which Apple has almost as much dominance as Microsoft has on the PC
desktop.
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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