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Charles On... The ITunes Juggernaut

Charles Arthur, technology editor at The Independent, in his personal Charles On… blog, argues the crazy contrarian opinion that Apple is pursuing a sensible business strategy in NOT opening up iTunes and the iPod to competitors, like Microsoft’s WMA format. In taking this line, Arthur is almost completely alone among the pundits. Most other mavens […]

Charles Arthur, technology editor at The Independent, in his personal Charles On... blog, argues the crazy contrarian opinion that Apple is pursuing a sensible business strategy in NOT opening up iTunes and the iPod to competitors, like Microsoft's WMA format.

In taking this line, Arthur is almost completely alone among the pundits. Most other mavens insist Apple will shortly get eaten alive for going it alone: just like it did in the eighties with the Mac. This, of course, is hogwash. As Arthur explains:

"Apple really owns this market at the moment, and there's little sign of others getting into it. For each song sold on other music stores, more than two are sold on iTunes. (It's a 3:7 ratio.) For each non-iPod sold with a hard drive, nine iPods are rung up.

So saying that "Apple has chosen an isolationist course" is like saying Microsoft has chosen an isolationist course with Windows, because you can't run .exes on Linux or OSX. It's true, but lacks context."

Update: Arthur fleshed out his ideas into a longer piece, Why iPod's tune won;t change, published Wednesday.