14 DAY TRIAL // One can easily consider this a very good, if not the best, financial year for Apple. After the launch of the iPhone, Apple has only seen the good side of life on the financial market. Its products have been waited for mainly due to the innovative multi-touch interface introduced by Steve Jobs in January.
At that moment in time, people almost instantly wanted to get their hands on the gadget and, as it seems, nowadays they still feel the same urge when the iPhone is near by. Do you want proof? Take a look at how O2 is doing in UK and you'll surely approve what I've just said (as their CEO declared that 60% of their new customers arrived from other carriers due to the iPhone launch on O2's network).
Despite all of these, there are things that can make Apple's management mark the December 27th with a black pen on their calendar. Apple lost a deal with the Warner Music Group, a deal which would have allowed them to distribute unprotected content through iTunes.
Instead of signing the deal with Apple, Warner has chosen Amazon, which has already announced the availability of Warner Music Group's albums on their Amazon MP3 website. This way, the Amazon customers will be able to buy DRM free music that can be played on almost any device available at the moment on the market (including Microsoft's Zune and Apple's iPod).
As Michael Nash, the Warner Senior VP of Digital Strategy, has declared, "Consumers want flexibility with respect to what they can do with music once they purchase it, and we want them to have that flexibility. We believe that giving consumers the assurance that the music they purchase can be played on any device they own will only encourage more sales of music."
Although announcing the online availability of Warner's albums on their website, Amazon hasn't specified yet the way one can buy this type of musical content from their website, so no one knows for sure whether the albums can be split up in single songs or one would have to buy them as a whole.
Being already blacklisted by Universal (which has also signed a deal with Amazon), Apple only has a contract with EMI, one of the three major music labels that have decided to distribute content free of digital rights management restrictions. Sony BMG, the fourth major power on the music market, still has to make a move in this direction and is the only one of the four that keeps its content bundled DRM restrictions.
Fear not, Apple fans, because a possible deal between Sony BMG and Apple might straighten up the DRM-free music market and restore the Cupertino based company's dominance on the online music sales department.
Meanwhile, Apple is still capable of delivering non-DRM music content to its customers through the iTunes store, due to the contract signed with EMI and waits for Sony to make up its mind and choose sides in the ongoing online music sales war.