The drumbeat continues as Google takes on Apple in yet another realm Cupertino once thought secure. The Internet giant plans to take on iTunes, adding music downloads to its Android Marketplace.
At first, owners of Android devices will need to visit Google’s Web shop to purchase and download tunes to their cell phones (and later tablets, potentially). Unclear is when the music download service will become directly available through Android-based handsets, according to TechCrunch.
Google also introduced new software from its acquisition of Simplify Media enabling Android owners to purchase DRM-free tracks on iTunes and then sync them with their phones. The move breaks the closed distribution Apple once had between iTunes and Apple devices.
The announcement by the Mountain View, Calif. Internet giant follows a report by Billboard that Apple has widened its lead in digital music sales. Apple’s iTunes now has 26.65 percent of the U.S. music market, an increase from 21.42 percent in 2009. The report also noted direct-to-phone music sales never caught on and remains in the single-digits.
Along with Google Music, the company Thursday unveiled Google TV, an area many analysts believed the Android creator would enter.
[via 9to5Mac and TechCrunch]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
