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Airlines and Apple Discuss iTunes Deal

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 1:15 PM - by

In-flight entertainment (IFE) providers for the airline industry have been negotiating with Apple to bring iTunes and the iTunes Music Store to each passenger's seat. According to Flight, airlines are hoping to strike a deal where passengers could use their frequent flyer miles to purchase and download music and videos to their iPods via a seat-back interface and dock.

Brad Foreman, vice-president and in-flight systems general manager for IFE provider Thales, commented: "We've had lots of discussions with Apple. The key is to get them to see the value of hosting iTunes on an aircraft."

The airlines see the iTMS as a prime opportunity to branch out into in-flight e-commerce, and have been asking for seat-back iTunes kiosks and iPod docks. They see flights as an ideal time to browse and purchase music.

IFE providers are already taking the first steps in making music downloads available, even without Apple's support. The companies are developing in-flight systems that require passengers to use their laptops to access music. What they really want, however, is an easy way to plug in an iPod and copy music to it.

Mr. Foreman hopes a deal with Apple can be worked out. "Is it a big enough market for them to be interested in?" he asked rhetorically. "I'd try to do it tomorrow if they said yes."

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:43 pm

IFE or EFI?

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:25 pm

Um how would that work? You can't load music from your iPod onto your computer... so if you buy a song on the plane and load it onto the iPod, then what do you do with it? When your iPod dies you lose all the music you bought?

I guess Apple would have to implement some special logic for these "kiosk" music files to be officially transferrable back to a computer. And yes I realize you can technically get stuff off your iPod, but its not official so that doesn't count.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:36 pm

Biff's point is covered more clearly in the AppleInsider.com coverage, where it says:

"Apple is reportedly aware of the potential in-flight market, but in order to license an onboard system offering would need to re-engineer the its iTunes FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) software to allow songs downloaded mid-flight to be transferred back on the user's hard disk when they arrive back home. "

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Biff said:

member since 08 Apr 2004 with 1479 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Apr 12, 2006 6:53 am

LOL. Not sure I'd call that "clearly". I'm not usually one to bitch about grammer and such, but geez.

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diggler_downunder said:

member since 12 Apr 2006 with 1 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:20 pm

This was leaked five months ago, December last year. Mobile Information, Communications and Entertainment (www.mice.tv).

It seems they have figured out a clever way of bridging the 'last meter' between iTunes and the iPod inflight, which I expect is backed by Apple, part of a wider TICE strategy emanating beyond the radar of the old school IFE providers.

According to industry insiders it's a robust solution with no hardware retrofit, no broadband wifi bottlenecks, no satellite dish strapped on top, so could become ubiquitous almost instantly.

It seems the end-goal for IFE is not PC-anywhere thinking but world-leading content on-tap for the consumer, in-home, in-car, in-lounge as well as in-flight.

Thales and Panasonic would do well to explore M&A opportunities in the wider TICE market because there's more to IFE than connectivity (and Connexion).

Once consumers have the reigns, all bets are off.

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