Stan Beer
Thursday, 01 June 2006 20:25
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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.