The Urge Merges

The Washington Post reports that MTV has abandoned it's partnership with Microsoft by taking their Urge service to RealNetworks. The new service, called Rhapsody America, will work with Verizon's V-Cast, as well as Windows and some digital music-players.

MTV has abandoned it's partnership with Microsoft by taking their Urge digital music service to RealNetworks. The new service, called Rhapsody America, will work with Verizon's V-Cast phones, providing mobile distribution in addition the the usual internet offerings of the previous Urge service.

Doomed by Microsoft's disinterest after the introduction of the Zune player, which was incompatible with the "PlaysForSure" framework originally designed by Microsoft, the Urge service had failed to bring in more than a token number of subscribers. This new service hopes to compete against iTunes and the iPhone, but according to Verizon's Chief Marketing Officer, the service is "..not somehow about how we collectively compete with the iPhone. I think that's a very limiting definition."

Instead, the service hopes its larger pool of hardware devices will lead to a competitive advantage. According to Ron Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks, "This is a close collaboration of partners that believes in the idea of openness. Consumers should get to pick what mobile phone they want and get great music on it." However, a quick review of previous attempts, including those by RealNetworks and MTV, to topple Apple's iTunes indicates that this strategy may not bring consumers away from the iTunes ecosystem.

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HD-DVD and Blu-Ray dependent on console sales.

One of the most notable thing about this C|Net article on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray sales, is just how dependent the formats are on video game consoles. According to the article, Sony's Playstation 3 accounts for 1.4 Million of purchased Blu-Ray players (only 100,000 are set-top boxes) and the XBox accounts for half of the 300,000 HD-DVD players sold. This is a tiny percentage of the 13 Million XBox systems Microsoft expects to sell by June 2007.

This was already well understood that Blu-Ray would be buttressed by the PS3's introduction, however, so far without the PS3 Blu-Ray is just a flash in the pan. Surprisingly, HD-DVD is also hampered by poor sales, and the Microsoft juggernaut appears strangely uncomitted with their own pet format, having waited until late 2006 to introduce a drive for the XBox to play HD-DVD.

So, while C|Net writes: "...but just six months after the first Blu-ray players went on sale, the numbers show that the fight may be nearing its conclusion..." I can't imagine that this fight is over just yet, rather I'd expect a long internecine war of price drops and PR campaigns.

My own advice, keep your standard DVD player.

Why I Don't Trust Microsoft: Entry No.: 195

Apparently, Microsoft has patented the ridiculously evil "advertising framework" which will use "context data" from the user's own hard-drive to deliver ads. Yes, they want to use your data (including text documents, music, photos, etc.) to sell you stuff. Of course this data will be secure and anonymous. And, of course this will not be another vector for malware. Not to mention the potential for embarrassing spam based on content you'd rather no one knew you had.

Microsoft continues to view users as a source of revenue rather than as customers.

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Macintosh BU is alive!

This is good news, the Microsoft Business Unit (who builds Office for the Macintosh) has announced updates to Microsoft Office for the Mac. This includes updates to RDC as well as file converters for Word and Powerpoint. Oddly, Excel goes unmentioned, but I would assume that a file converter is coming for that program as well. Stay tuned.

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