Apple: The Market Reacts To New Competition

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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It must be humiliating for MTV and RealNetworks (RNWK) to say they will compete with Apple (AAPL) iTunes and watch the AAPL shares spike up almost 6% to $129. RNWK were up only slightly more, and they should be the big beneficiaries of the news.

What the market’s reaction says is simple. Even with Viacom (VIA), Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon (VZ) and Vodagone (VOD) , behind  a deal to sell and distribute music over one of the largest cellphone networks in the world, AAPL can’t be touched. MTV is a global brand. It doesn’t matter. RealNetworks has outstanding technology.

The new music store initiative is being viewed as a loser before it is even launched. And, that is probably right. It is hard to see what someone with an iPod (almost everyone), using iTunes, would switch to the new platform. Using cellphones to play music may become a big business, but it is not today.

In addition, that market does not like four-way deals among big companies. Each one has a different goal, and no one runs the thing. The promise and the problems end up in a committee.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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