Bites Off the Apple: Apple Vs Mobile Music

We’ve written a bunch about iPod vs the mobile music players, and lo behold, now Barron’s writes a long story on this battle. Expect Apple’s stock to get hit in trading tomorrow, and also expect Musiwave (one of the biggest companies in the mobile music tech and aggregation space…based in France), subject of some good mentions in this story, to come into acquisition play (not that it wasn’t a target before, but this will help a lot)…
Anyway, the argument is familiar: 3G pipes will help mobile operators push down full-tracks onto memory rich handphones, and hence Apple’s iPod may face a huge battle ahead. Bunch of other reasons, and all of them are logical, as always. Wake me up when it actually happens…
Meanwhile, back to Musiwave: The 170-person firm runs the largest full-track download service, under contract with 34 telephone companies around the world. Musiwave chairman Gilles Babinet says his firm will disclose its first American telco client in October, but confesses that the U.S. carriers have been a tough sell. “The telcos didn’t really believe that a French company could do better than them,” says Babinet.

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