perfidy

In the wake of the joint EMI/Apple announcement that DRM-free EMI tunes will be available for sale on Apple's iTunes store, people have been speculating on what it all means. Aside from many predictions of the imminent demise of DRM, one potential fallout is a new chapter in the audio standards war. (Apple favors AAC, Microsoft WMA, and MP3 is the default other format. For more info on audio file formats, see this wikipedia overview with links, or the second half of this article for a good explanation.) Arik Hesseldahl of Business Week talks on this, and it's well worth a read, but the bit that got me laughing was this:

AAC-format supporters include some notable names, including Microsoft's Zune. So come May, the 16 people who own one will be able to buy EMI tracks from iTunes and presumably play them on that device.

I am amused by how Microsoft always quotes market share figures by saying, "Hard Drive Music Players." They've gotten less than 10% of maybe a quarter of the total music player market, and that doesn't even take into account iPod sales from Apple stores and online. They might have managed to get 2% of the total market. Quite a splash considering how much cash they through at it.