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Deutsche Telekom eyeing Sprint Nextel for acquisition?
With T-Mobile UK and Orange now having to (potentially) learn to play nice, Deutsche Telekom is already looking ahead to its next big target: Sprint Nextel. According to a Telegraph report, the telecom giant, with an estimated value of $60.45 billion, has called in advisers from Deutsche Bank as it reportedly prepares to submit an offer to the $10.6 billion-valued Now Network within the next three weeks. The assimilation of Sprint and Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile US under the same umbrella could give second-place AT&T a fight with a 78.2 million-strong customer base... but that said, we wouldn't anticipate any quick or smooth merger given the US carriers rely on substantially different bands (CDMA vs. GSM) for service. Hey, there's always WiMAX might come into play. Obviously there's a lot of unanswered questions here, but at this point it's all speculation given no actual offer has been thrown on the table -- and we bet Hesse will have some choice words on the matter. Keep an eye out on this one, things could very quickly get very, very interesting here. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
iTunes in Germany: Is it the most popular?
Sales reports from Germany's iTMS show that there were 15.5 million songs sold through the service in 2005. T-Online's MusicLoad claimed 15 million song sales as well, but included free downloads in their estimate unlike Apple.What shocked me more than those fairly close figures is the figure that the iTMS accounts for 80 percent of all legal downloads in the world. Following high tax levies on digital music downloads, devices and blank CD/DVD's in Europe, it's a wonder people don't just pirate everything. A highly contested new tax on media playing devices in Switzerland is set to go into effect on March 1st.In other German news, I sure hope that Germany will gain some Apple stores this year as rumored. It would be handier for me to be able to step into an Apple Store to drool over all the new releases in person, rather than virtually.
