blake johnson

I am becoming a bit nervous about Apple’s future. They are sitting on some great products, but I’m not sure that Apple’s current strategy is in its best long-term interests. My particular concern is with Apple’s unwillingness to liscense their DRM technology to other device manufacturers. I love the AAC codec and I love the iTunes Music store… but the music industry has too much power to be limited to a single distributer. There is a lot of music out there which is not available through iTunes, and if people cannot get the music they want from iTunes, and when cheap and good alternatives to the iPod exist, people will drift away from Apple’s iPod/iTunes music platform.

I am fully aware that the iPod is the best-selling portable music player currently on the market, and that Apple is reaching out to those that cannot afford an iPod with the iPod Shuffle, but I think pretty soon Apple is going to have to open up the AAC format to other distributers, or else risk eroding it’s market share.