Amazon Deals Another Blow to Apple's iTunes

The digital music store that Amazon is building added another category and provider to its offerings, late last week. And an expensive one at that, with 300 million dollars being paid for Audible Inc. The company adds to bigger names from the music industry that have partnered with Amazon MP3, such as Warner Music Group Corp and Vivendi's Universal Music Group.

The purchase is somehow unexpected, due to the good relations between iTunes and Audible in the past, but no counter offer has been made. Richard Fetyko, analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford, said in a note to clients that "We have long suspected that Apple would be the party most interested in acquiring Audible," according to Reuters. "Audible's audiobook content is sold within Apple's iTunes online music store, which represents about 25-30 percent of Audible's revenue," he added.

There was no official statement from Apple regarding the deal, but that must have not sat right with Steve Jobs' company.

The price a share of Audible went for was $11.50 and it included a 23 percent premium to last Wednesday's Nasdaq close of $9.33. However, it looks like the digital audio books provider sold itself short, because only a couple of weeks ago its shares were valued at $14.22, according to analysts quoted by the cited source.

The books that Audible offers include famous ones, from authors such as Stephen King and Jane Austen, and the 80,000 tracks come to complement the 3,3 million that Amazon already has available for its customers. The move was a logical follow-up to the rolling out of Kindle, a portable wireless book reader. "Audible was already the exclusive partner for Amazon's digital audio offering on Amazon.com. Audible will benefit from an immediate branding event and become integral to the very bright future of Amazon Kindle," said Scott Devitt, Stifel Nicolaus analyst, in a client note.