I agree 100% with your conclusions.
I think your point regarding what is needed to unseat the market leader is spot on and is so often missing in (other) analysis.
So what do you suggest Walmart do then? Walmart is the largest music reseller which includes CDs. How can they leverage that?
I think it's great for consumers that they've gone below the $ 0.99 price point on non-DRM music. But I don't like the way it's isolating Mac users.
Do you think Universal is deliberately using stores that are not Mac compatible? Gbox is not either, and as far as I know that's a from the ground up new venture to sell Universal stuff.
I remember reading that Steve thinks of the music store as a way to guarantee access to music to Apple customers, and this seems to strike right at the heart of this, albiet in the strange guise of openness.
Is this an attempt to put pressure on Steve so he caves in to their demands, or a serious attempt to sell music?
D
All this silliness in the press.
Q1: Does the music play on the market-leading (70% share) device?
If no, stop. You do not even have parity. Without parity, you're not even better, let alone significantly better.
While the iTS is not that big a lock in to the ipod, the reverse IS true... who wants to shop at a music store where the tracks won't work on their device? Only the dedicated and the tech-savvy.
No store without 100% iPod compatibility has a share in more than single digits...
And, by fragmenting the non-iPod market, the Zune actually helps Apple in this regard.
Wal-Mart killing iTMS hyperbole aside, that its online music shop won't work with Macs (for now) isn't a factor: most iPod sales go to Windows users.
The iTunes store has nothing to worry about from the Wal-Mart music store (WMMS).
Visit the WMMS and check out the buying experience. It is a stripped down, sterile experience.
It reminds me of the Wal-Mart video rental service (the Netflix Killer) - a service for those folks who price is the 1st, 2nd and 3rd most important criteria when choosing where to shop.
The WMMS is just about all WMA tracks (top 100 have 5 MP3 available). It's like looking through the bargain bin - unusable crap with the occasional good find. Are shoppers going to put up with a lousy shopping experience to save a few cents? Nope.
I couldn't visit the WMMS from my Mac and when I visited it via a Windows computer via Firefox, it warned me that I may not have access to all the content. What kind of knuckleheads created the WMMS.
Wal-Mart is really good at one thing - selling TONS of merchandise to people in their stores at low prices.
They have had very little success in the online space and even less space in the online media space. Even crazier when you factor in their size & financial resources.
Wal-Mart and Zune. A match made in heaven.
I heard Walmart described once as having all the charm of something from the former Soviet Union, but with stocked shelves.
Commenting by HaloScan
