Napster’s chief executive says that Microsoft and its hardware partners are to blame for Apple’s dominant 80 percent market share in digital music sales.
“There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months,” Napster CEO Chris Gorog said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York. “Our business does rely on Microsoft’s digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft’s ecosystem of device manufacturers.”
“It’s a lot more complex to get organized properly than it is to build one device and one service as Apple has done,” Gorog added. “It’s always been painful at the introduction of new technologies. But it always takes shape like it’s done in the past.” Gorog still contends that the Microsoft partners will win. “Ultimately, the consumer electronics giants… are all going to come to this Windows Media party,” he said. “This is really going to be the ubiquitous format.”
