Japan launching pad for Microsoft led anti iPod consortium

Stan Beer
Thursday, 01 June 2006 20:25

Your IT - Home IT

Rattled by the stranglehold that Apple has over the portable music market, a Microsoft led consortium of nine companies based in Japan plan to develop an iPod killer using Windows Media Player.

The consortium includes mobile handset manufacturer NTT DoCoMo, Toshiba Cor and Napster Japan, among others. It is believed that Japan is the perfect market to launch the MP3 player which, given the inclusion of NTT DoCoMo will probably come in the form of a mobile phone. Japanese are avid mobile web surfers.

Anyone developing an MP3 at present would be foolish not to develop it as part of an integrated mobile phone device as mobile downloads are becoming more commonplace. Apple is known to be working on its own version of an iPod phone.

The move by Microsoft appears to be a smart one. With so many Japanese companies involved in the consortium, take up of the new player in the consumer technology hungry Japanese market stands a good chance of success. This could then serve as a launching pad into other markets, currently dominated by iPod.