No sooner has Steve Jobs left stage left having announced the deal to sell digital downloads without DRM protection, than Jeff Bezos enters right stage and announces he can do it too.
Amazon has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May. Will they meet their deadlines? Can they break the stranglehold iTunes have on the download market?
Forget Google and Microsoft the issue is between Bezos versus Jobs. These two individuals want the consumer business for both music and books. Will Jobs next announce ebooks on iPhones? Will Bezos announces a ‘secretative’ deal with major publishers and Google to create middleware and a new ebook playing field?
What is clear that Jobs has the style the lateral thinking and the fashion tag, whilst Bezos has the determination, single focus and importantly all the bases covered.
Bring on the giants!
