Apple Agrees To Reduce iTunes Prices in UK

Music fans in the UK have reason to celebrate. Apple announced it will lower the prices it charges for music on its UK iTunes Store within six months. The decision marks the end of a European Commission antitrust probe into Apple’s pricing practices.The prices will match the standardized pricing on iTunes across Europe. Consumers in the UK have been paying about 10 percent more for digital music downloads than consumers in other European nations.

Apple said it must pay some record labels more to distribute their music in the UK than it pays them to distribute the same music elsewhere in Europe. The company said it will reconsider its continuing relationship in the UK with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months.

“This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.”

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Add comment January 10th, 2008

Microsoft Bids $1.2B on FAST Search

Microsoft made a $1.2 billion bid on Norwegian enterprise search vendor, Fast Search and Transfer, or FAST, a company that could boost its Office product suite and compete with Google.”Enterprise search is becoming an indispensable tool to businesses of all sizes, helping people find, use and share critical business information quickly,” Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said in a statement. “Until now organizations have been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search technologies or more mainstream, infrastructure solutions.”

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Add comment January 10th, 2008