Over at theage.com.au, Alan Kohler is predicting the impending downfall of Apple's iTunes music store. Although the piece doesn't offer a huge amount of evidence, history suggests that Kohler's line of reasoning may still be sound.
What he's saying, in effect, is that Apple will be overtaken in the not too distant future by companies using an open, licensable architecture because closed systems of the sort Apple uses to retain total control seldom if ever succeed long term.
He reasons,
The shock troops for
Microsoft's victory over Apple in personal computers in the 1980s were
Intel, Compaq, IBM, Dell, Toshiba and so on - that is the chip
manufacturer and the cheap PC makers that licensed the Windows
operating system.
With digital music and video it will be Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony - the mobile phone manufacturers.
This year they will start releasing phones with the same storage as iPods - up to 30 gigabytes. iPods themselves will have to become phones.
Microsoft's software will power the new generation of phone/music players, and the business of selling digital songs and TV shows will open up. Google will probably run the most popular online store, but there will be thousands.
With digital music and video it will be Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony - the mobile phone manufacturers.
This year they will start releasing phones with the same storage as iPods - up to 30 gigabytes. iPods themselves will have to become phones.
Microsoft's software will power the new generation of phone/music players, and the business of selling digital songs and TV shows will open up. Google will probably run the most popular online store, but there will be thousands.
There are good reasons to think that Kohler is right to predict that Apple's current dominance in legal music/video file-downloads will come to an end. Windows, after all, is just one of many example of where an open system has taken over from a closed one, even if it arrives late in the day.
Ethernet networking is another classic computer example. It arrived after the established (but proprietary) token ring and Arcnet systems but with 3Com (founded by Ethernet's inventor Robert Metcalfe), DEC, Intel and Xerox working together to make Ethernet an industry standard, it rapidly came to the fore.
On the consumer electronics front, the most celebrated example of a late-arriving successful open system is VHS. JVC's Shizuo Takano, who came to be known as Mr VHS, toured the world's consumer electronics companies humbly offering them the chance to license the VHS VCR system for reasonable fees - something that Sony had been unwilling to do with Betamax.
TV rental companies and makers of TV sets eagerly took up Takano's offer and, consequently, the allegedly technically superior Betamax format, despite its earlier arrival to market having created a considerable volume of sales, ended up being swamped by VHS-standard recorders rented or sold under a multitude of brand names.
Your thoughts welcome in the HEXUS.community on the likelihood of Apple's iTunes music store being doomed and on open vs closed systems generally.
HEXUS.links
Saga of Mr VHS - USA Today
Videotape format war - Wikipedia
Ethernet networking - Wikipedia