Music stops for Mac Windows Media Player

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Why give up 10-20% of the market?

---Because if they didn't, they would cut themselves out of 95%
of the market. The reverse simply can't be said.---

Why would any smart company deliberately cut themselves out
of 10-20% of the market? Do you think a company like Napster,
who uses MS' DRM would be happier to be available to all users
or to 80% of the users? Given the general perception that Apple
customers are better off financially, I'd think that'd be an
important part of the market for a luxury entertainment product.

---Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there currently a version of
WMP for Mac? So technically, they are able to.---

Nope. The "current" version of WMP dates back to 2003 since its
last improvement. It's always been several steps behind the
Windows version, has never supported the latest version of WMA
or WMV, and has never been able to play MS' DRM. In use, it was
always a horrible beast, no ability to fast forward or rewind, if
you paused it, you'd go back to the beginning of the video/song.

---Now you are saying that Microsoft wants to use its monopoly
on the media market to improve its monopoly on the desktop
market?---

I can't think of other reasons for them deliberately giving up on
such a good sized chunk of the market, unless it's part of some
larger strategy. You may be right though, it may be an
economic decision, based on a realization that their Mac product
was never going to be as good as what was already offered on
the Mac, so why throw good money after bad.

---How does Microsoft have a monopoly on media if 60% of all
portable media players will not play WMA?---

Are iPods the only devices that can play music or video? What
about computers, phones, PDA's, gaming consoles, etc.? The
media wars are just beginning, they're far from over. If, for
some reason, Apple stumbles, keep in mind who's file formats
and DRM are used by nearly every single pay for download store
out there aside from Apple's and Real's.

---I propose 3) Microsoft does not want to spend the manpower
maintaining an application that no Apple users want and at best
will give them access to another 5% of the market (assuming that
everyone who owns a Mac doesn't also have access to a Windows
PC).---

I think this speaks to the quality of MS' offerings. A quality MS
product, like Office, has had no trouble at all gaining traction on
the Mac and being a big profit center for MS. Clearly, they
weren't able to make a high quality media player that would gain
similar traction.

Regardless of their reasoning, it's bad for consumers. It further
divides the field, it doesn't allow us to choose our products on
the basis of merits. Since I'm a Mac user, if I want to buy music
online, I really only have one choice, the iTMS. And this is a bad
thing for me as a consumer. An iPod owner is similarly limited
and this is a bad thing as well, although perhaps less so,
because at least it doesn't affect their choice of computer OS.

Posted by: tic swayback   Posted on: 01/13/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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