Coming over the wires on Christmas Eve was the report that Anssi Vanjoki, the Exec VP at Nokia leading the push on the Finnish Community Portal, Ovi, would be happy for Apple's iTunes store to be represented (reports CNN). "Of course, Apple can get into our portal. We even invite (Apple Inc chief executive) Steve Jobs to do so," he is quoted as saying. It's highly unlikely that Jobs would take up this offer, but in ensuring Nokia's online strategy, including its music store, is mentioned in the same breath as a more powerful competitor (in this case the iPod) is classic marketing strategy for an underdog.
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As Ewan says, Apple will never share iTunes with other hardware willingly because it doesn't make that much money from just selling music.
But if at some point someone else (Nokia or whoever) comes up with a popular cross-platform music service, will Apple have any choice but to open up iTunes to other hardware? Their track record with locking the Mac OS to Apple-made hardware would suggest they'll never open iTunes, but that mistake cost them dearly as it allowed Windows to become the dominant OS instead of Macintosh.
didnt nuTsie already do this?
As far as I know, apple has never learned from its mistakes, this time too they'll end up rejecting this offer and later witness ovi becoming a bigger phenomena than itunes. Come to think of it, even if apple rejects the offer, there are million other devices that'd buy stuff from Ovi.