By Michelle Kessler, USA TODAY

Who's afraid of retail giant Wal-Mart? Not Apple Computer (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs (news - web sites).

Jobs said Monday that more than 25 million songs have been downloaded from Apple's iTunes music store, launched in April. That topped analysts' expectations for the service, which charges 99 cents a song.

But iTunes, challenged now only by small players, will soon face big competitors. Wal-Mart (WMT) is expected to launch a downloading site before year's end. Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) plan to enter the market in 2004.

Jobs says he has no plans to lower prices or dramatically change iTunes to address the new threats. "We're going to continue on our winning strategy," he said in an interview.

Wal-Mart usually drives prices down when it enters a market, says economist Mark Zandi of Economy.com. But Jobs says Apple already competes with low prices, such as rival Rhapsody's 79-cent downloads. Quality keeps customers loyal, Jobs says. Besides, Wal-Mart's Web store "did not set the world on fire," Jobs says. "We'll see if it (music site) is competitive." Walmart.com is the No. 4 shopping Web site, says Nielsen/NetRatings.

Nor does Jobs plan to let iTunes customers use portable digital music players made by other companies. Today, customers can download songs to nearly any PC but need Apple's iPod if they want a portable player. (Apple makes most of its money selling iPods, not songs, analysts say.) "Our strategy is to support the No. 1 MP3 player in the market," Jobs says. IPod has 50% market share, researcher NPD Group says.

Rivals such as Dell have introduced more flexible portable players for other services. Jobs says Apple "trounced Dell this quarter" in music player sales. Researcher Jupiter predicts the $80 million digital music market will hit $1.6 billion in 2008. The field is quickly getting more crowded.

Jobs also said that half of iTunes sales are entire albums, not individual songs. Some music critics and artists feared that selling songs individually would destroy the album format.

Wal-Mart usually drives prices down when it enters a market,

not unless they sell the songs at cost as a lost leader. (RIAA takes two thirds of the .99 cent price)

also walmart's pricing policy doesn't put .09 cents at the end of it's prices. so maybe they'll sell their songs for .97 cents. a drastic reduction

iPods are most definately not the best players on the market at the moment, although there's no doubting they're the most popular .

Get informed:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122711

1. iRiver iHP120
2. Creative Zen NX
3. iPod

"Jobs says he has no plans to lower prices or dramatically change iTunes to address the new threats. "We're going to continue on our winning strategy," he said in an interview. "

That is utterly retarded. I'm sure it will work because jobs will put enough money into it to make it work, but that does not negate the fact that he could be more competitive if he responded to the changes in the market. Simply ignoring changes in the market place does not make your strategy best. But Jobs knows that he has breeded many apple goonies for a long time and they will support his itunes without a problem. So bye bye apple, crawl back under your rock and survive on the wallets of all those mac heads.

"Researcher Jupiter predicts the $80 million digital music market will hit $1.6 billion in 2008."

Jupiter is apparently picking numbers out of the air. Yesterday's news said that Apple's 25 million downloads represents 70 percent of the market. At a buck a pop.

Yet the other 30 percent adds up to $65 million?

"Our strategy is to support the No. 1 MP3 player in the market," Jobs says. IPod has 50% market share, researcher NPD Group says.

I thougt the IPod used Apple's file format. Which would make something other than an MP3 player. I guess it could do both. Personaly I don't understand why we dont have OGG players. If we are going to go all the way and have a gig of space FLAC might not be a bad feature. Could fit several CDs at one time and no data loss. MP3s are the worst file format out. At low bit rates they are truely tragic. Just early bird getting the worm I guess.

Who cares. I've got a cheap mini-CD MP3 player for pennies and get my MP3's for free.

agreeing with George on the Jupiter prediction. They seem to create fictions out of thin air. I certainly am glad I am not associated with these companies nor people.

LOL has anyone looked at some of the cds at Wal-mart? I remember about a year ago looking at a hip-hop cd and so many words were blocked out I could only read one or two songs on the album. Who is going to dl songs that are changed and bleeped out anyways?
Maybe you will be able to buy songs in bulk at Sam's club. rofl