HP Denies Claims it Will Bring WMA to iPod

HP’s recently announced deal at CES with Apple to sell HP-branded iPods does not mean that it intends to extend support of Microsoft’s WMA audio format to the iPod portable music player, the company said today.

Contrary to some reports, HP does not have current plans to break out of the boundaries established by Apple’s iTunes, which supports only MP3 and Apple’s AAC audio formats.

But Jupiter analyst Joe Wilcox shows some other discrepancies: “For the next six months, HP customers have access to MusicMatch and its music store. Songs bought there, in WMA, won’t play in iTunes or on iPod,” said Wilcox. “In a few months, when HP starts to consider the customer problems associated with two non-compatible formats — WMA and FairPlay AAC — things might look different to the company.”

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