Sam Iles's Blog

People often suggest the reason Apple bought Lala was to get its music label deals, or that the reason Apple or whoever should buy Spotify or the American version Rdio is to get its content deals. People know Apple has trouble getting these deals because the labels don’t like them and prefer smaller companies.

But, all of these deals have non-transfer clauses. They only apply to the company that was given the deal. If the company is bought by someone else, the deal is automatically voided. If Apple bought Spotify, all the content would go and Apple would have to start again. This would be OK if it was bought some company the labels trust (because the deals could be easily renewed). But, they clearly don’t like Apple. And, Apple would be back at square one.

Apple or Microsoft would have no interest in buying Rdio or Spotify because:

A) Both only have deals for their respective areas. Rdio is Spotify for America, Spotify is Rdio for Europe. Apple isn’t in the game of providing Europe only services. They want to be global. B) Microsoft itself has Zune Pass – the exact same thing as Spotify (just with less content at the moment…) C) The technology is simple. It’s not as if Rdio and Spotify are breaking new technological ground – they’re just streaming songs online. Apple could build that into iTunes in days.

There are a few more, but those are big ones. To surmise: Apple and Microsoft must build these services themselves. And, they probably will. If Apple does launch its mythical “iCould” service at WWDC, let’s face it, it’s the end of Spotify and Rdio (and Zune Pass) anyway…

Today, Microsoft and Nokia announced a ‘partnership’ to make Windows Phone 7 the main platform used by Nokia for their phones. In fact, it pretty much is the only operating system they’ll be using as Symbian is on the way out and MeeGo is still forming in the figurative womb of Nokia and Intel.

The fact that Nokia’s new CEO, Mr Elop, is an ex-Microsoft executive notwithstanding, this seems like an odd decision to me. I mean, Windows Phone 7 Series 7 Phone is fresh out of the door of Redmond and so far has made little impact. Sales figures are non-existent (apart from meaningless ‘licences sold to OEMs’) and its reviews have been mixed at best. So, why bet everything on Windows Phone 7?

Of course, we don’t know what deals were made in camera. I expected Nokia to make WP7 devices, if for no other reason than not doing so would be a huge CE-Oh No He Didn’t from Elop vis a vis Microsoft’s baby platform. (Two Latin phrases in two sentences?) But, I suspected he would pick Android too and go with both.

Regardless of why he made the decision, was it the right one? I guess that only time will tell. After all, WP7 is very, very new and has yet to fail (or succeed, I guess). But, is betting Nokia’s entire future on this platform wise? I mean, it’s hard enough starting with a blank slate once in a company’s history – let alone doing it again in two years with Android.

I think a safer bet would have been trying with Android and WP7. Nokia is the Smartphone King of Europe (Apple notwithstanding, of course) and Android has made little headway in the Union of Rompuy, so a combination of the two could be really very awesome.

Ultimately, to repeat my earlier cliché – only time will tell.

So, I just got an email from Microsoft about making apps for Windows and – in particular – Windows Phone 7 (which they’ve been paying people to develop for). They badly need apps because they think their couple of thousand looks bad up to Apple’s hundreds of thousands.

Anyway, this email contained the headline “build an app for that”.

I just thought it was worth reflecting on the difference between their’s and Apple’s app stores.

Apple’s tagline: there’s an app for that. Microsoft’s tagline: build an app for that.

I just thought it was funny and 140 characters wasn’t enough to express it.

The EU and everyone else has been all over Microsoft for years about it shipping Windows with Internet Explorer as the default browser. And rightly so: IE is bad and people shouldn’t be forced to use it.

But, what about all the other programs? Why is bundling a browser so bad, but bundling an Email program is just fine?

It isn’t even like Microsoft are giving away a product for free that other companies charge for, therefore eliminating all competition. All browsers are free. Well, most of them anyway.

I just booted up my Windows installation, take a look at these:

• Internet Explorer 8 (Safari, Firefox, Opera, more)
• Windows Media Player (iTunes, Quicktime, VLC, more)
• Paint (Paint.net, more)
• Windows Mail (Thunderbird, more)
• And many more

So, surely by this logic that Microsoft are breaking antitrust laws by bundling IE, should they be allowed to bundle anything? There are some nice calculator apps for PC, should Microsoft be allowed to bundle Calculator? Should Windows just be an empty shell capable of running programs that cannot do anything else at all until you get onto the web and download some. Should Mac OS X be the same?

I think that the key is to provide users with a clear, simple method to choose their programs. Rather than punishing software companies and users and forcing them to search for software maybe computers would benefit from a system like the App Store on iPhone. A simple method that, more than anything, lets users know that they have alternatives. Alternatives to nearly everything.

Alternatives which are usually better.