"What's more, the iTunes music store is only barely making a profit for mac. It'd be a cinch for MS to kick it while it's down (from an economic standpoint at least: iTunes has popularity going for it)." - Well, there you have it. I think the notion though that the iTMS is "down" because it is barely profitable is probably missing the point though. As Apple has acknowledged a number of times, the point of the iTMS is not to make money in and of itself. It's really there to help sell the iPod (and the iPod/iTMS combination). Apple doesn't specifically care about or need to make money from the iTMS (although any money they do make is a nice bonus); they care about providing a basis for content to make it easier to sell the iPod - remember, they didn't even want to do a video capable iPod until they were ready to at least start selling stuff like TV shows and music videos on the store, to give the average user something to buy to put on it (that is, they weren't specifically designing it for the more tech savvy user who has a lot of DivX videos that they might want to play).
So, as you said, the iTMS has popularity going for it, which is exactly what they want it to have. I don't see any reason to look at it and see it as being "down", since the profitability of the store itself is irrelevant (and this is one of the things that some of these other music services might not have realized yet - the money in this business seems to be in selling the player hardware - whether any business can be successful just selling music online is something that I'm not sure has been proven yet).
As it is, that is presumably exactly why MS has finally decided to go ahead and make their own player, since it seems like they have realized that the idea of just trying to depend on other companies to develop a successful music player hasn't worked; a few have had some limited success, but this is an area where MS would also benefit by having complete control over the overall experience from the hardware and software side.
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"What's more, the iTunes music store is only barely making a profit for mac. It'd be a cinch for MS to kick it while it's down (from an economic standpoint at least: iTunes has popularity going for it)." - Well, there you have it. I think the notion though that the iTMS is "down" because it is barely profitable is probably missing the point though. As Apple has acknowledged a number of times, the point of the iTMS is not to make money in and of itself. It's really there to help sell the iPod (and the iPod/iTMS combination). Apple doesn't specifically care about or need to make money from the iTMS (although any money they do make is a nice bonus); they care about providing a basis for content to make it easier to sell the iPod - remember, they didn't even want to do a video capable iPod until they were ready to at least start selling stuff like TV shows and music videos on the store, to give the average user something to buy to put on it (that is, they weren't specifically designing it for the more tech savvy user who has a lot of DivX videos that they might want to play).
So, as you said, the iTMS has popularity going for it, which is exactly what they want it to have. I don't see any reason to look at it and see it as being "down", since the profitability of the store itself is irrelevant (and this is one of the things that some of these other music services might not have realized yet - the money in this business seems to be in selling the player hardware - whether any business can be successful just selling music online is something that I'm not sure has been proven yet).
As it is, that is presumably exactly why MS has finally decided to go ahead and make their own player, since it seems like they have realized that the idea of just trying to depend on other companies to develop a successful music player hasn't worked; a few have had some limited success, but this is an area where MS would also benefit by having complete control over the overall experience from the hardware and software side.