Microsoft admits iPod helping Apple win

Om Malik | Thursday, July 28, 2005 | 11:45 PM PT | 1 comment

“The halo effect enabled them to go after PC users and sell them Apple products,” said Will Poole,, the Microsoft executive in charge of desktop operating system products.

1 comment so far

July 29th, 2005
8:36 AM PT
Jeff said:

Helping Apple win???

Win what? A point in market share? A reprieve from Microsoft having to bail them out with another investment?

The iPod is a wonderful product (I own 2), but…I’m trying to figure out what exactly they are winning? Music?? I realize that iTunes recently reached 500M downloads (which included the Pepsi campaign). Now if MSFT wanted to take even significant portion of its $37B in cash and give away songs for free to users (while paying rights holders)- how quickly would Apple lose market share?

Would that be smart for MSFT? Not sure… Music is a commodity business where they are competing on cost (everyone has roughly the same 1 million songs). Once the smart phones become mass market, it’ll be interesting to see how MSFT reacts.

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