People shop in a Creative outlet at a shopping mall in Singapore. Creative Technology said it slipped into the red for the year to June as the digital entertainment products maker continued to struggle against Apple's iPod in the MP3 player market.

[News Source]

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Creative Technology said it slipped into the red for the year to June as the digital entertainment products maker continued to struggle against Apple's iPod in the MP3 player market.

[News Source]

Nokia announced this week it will spend $60m on buying Loudeye, the digital music company. So what's with Nokia - the hardware, mobile phones and base stations company - going all software and services?

The Mighty Finn has been long chanting its 'we sold X million music-playing devices last quarter' mantra and there's no doubt that having a reasonable MP3 player on your phone will become as normal as having a decent camera is now.

So we can't help but salute Nokia's brave move into digital distribution - what better to way to guarantee there's a compatible service and available content for your MP3 player phones than to buy the firm that provides them?

[News Source]

Creative Technology, fighting a losing battle with Apple Computer's iPod music players, posted a narrower-than-expected fourth-quarter loss, lifted by a tax gain, and said it expects a profit by the end of 2006. Chief Executive Officer Sim Wong Hoo, who started the company 25 years ago, is struggling to find a product to prop up earnings hit by the iPod, which outsells Creative's players 10-to-1 in the United States. The company, which introduced a hard drive-based player two years before Apple, faces greater competition this year when Microsoft starts making its Zune music player.

[News Source]

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Creative Technology has said it slipped into the red for the year to June as the digital entertainment products maker continued to struggle against Apple's iPod in the MP3 player market and the outlook isn't good with new entries like Microsoft's Zune on the way.

[News Source]

Macworld readers warn that MIcrosoft's exisitng Windows Media partners will feel the pain of company's move into music player game.

[News Source]

Microsoft and its existing hardware partners are the most likely to suffer bad effects from the company's 'iPod killer' plans, Macworld readers believe.

[News Source]

Blog: Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks, seemed a little miffed with Microsoft during the company's Thursday second-quarter...

[News Source]

THE ANNOUNCEMENT of Zune did one thing, if one thing only. It didn't just send fear through the hearts of iPod product planners, but through those beating organs of Microsoft partners too.

[News Source]

It may be Microsoft's partners, rather than Apple and its iPod and iTunes service, that suffer from the Zune project, an analyst has warned.

[News Source]