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Business English: Crunch time for Apple's music icon

The time is ripe for the maker of iPods to open the doors on its iTunes "walled garden" - several countries dub the company the bad apple. von Kevin Allison and Tom Braithwaite

Pressure on Apple Computer to open its closed system of the iTunes digital music store and the iPod music player is spreading across Europe. Earlier this month Norway, Denmark and Sweden said Apple must make music tracks downloaded from iTunes playable on rival devices or get out of their countries. Finland is also looking at intervening. In France, legislation in its final stages in parliament would force all electronic devices to be "interoperable". Other European countries are thought to be considering action of their own. Francisco Mingorance from Business Software Alliance, a trade body whose members include Apple, Microsoft and Dell, admits that the onslaught "seems to have legs". In the UK, the BPI, the record industry trade body, told parliament last week that Apple needed to remove the copy protection measures that restrict the use of the tracks to its own iPod. "Apple has been both a brilliant innovator and successful friend of the industry by coming up with both the hardware or the software," says Peter Jamieson, BPI chairman. "Sadly, it's given them an 80 per cent market share." The pressure on Apple is coming in part from consumers. But the popularity of the iPod, which has attained iconic status for music lovers, and the ease of connecting the device with the iTunes online store has so far proved more important. At $13.9bn in revenues a year, Apple's overall market share is small compared with rivals such as Microsoft ($39.8bn) or Sony ($65.7bn). Yet in the burgeoning online music market, Apple dominates. The iTunes music store and the iPod music player enjoy market share of about 80 per cent in the US and the UK as well as "significantly more than half" in Europe, according to Jupiter Research. However, there are signs of a concerted consumer campaign. Customers at Apple's new 24-hour store on Fifth Avenue in New York were last week treated to the spectacle of men and women dressed in fluorescent radiation suits protesting against the "digital rights management" (DRM) software that stops iTunes tracks being played on other players. "As the largest purveyor of media infected with DRM, Apple has paved the way for the further erosion of users' rights and freedoms made possible by the technology," says DefectivebyDesign, the group behind the protests. In the UK, the Open Rights Group has been lobbying MPs to force companies to open up their DRM. "If I buy a car I expect any brand of petrol to work in it. Consumers are starting to see that they can do less with the music they buy," says Suw Charman, executive director of the group. Apple's defenders argue it has taken the risk, spent the development money and should be free to enjoy the success of its products that have been instrumental in popularising legal digital music.

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