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Microsoft Says No iPod Rival On the Way

Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 8:30 AM - by

After reports surfaced last week that Microsoft had teamed up with several other companies to develop an iPod competitor for the Japanese market, the company stated that it is a victim of mistranslation. PC Magazine is reporting that Microsoft is saying that its original statement in Japanese was only an announcement for the launch of Windows Media Player 11.

Microsoft representative Sally Julien stated "The announcement was written about the WMP 11 launch in Japan. The companies listed are partners who will use the technology in their products, just as they have done with WMP 10."

Microsoft's original announcement listed iRiver Japan, NTT DoCoMo, CreativeMedia, Toshiba, and Victor JVC, The Language Channel (a subscription-based e-learning service), OCN Music Store, and Napster Japan (scheduled to launch in the fall of 2006.). According to an anonymous Microsoft representative, "The announcement was misconstrued to sound like Microsoft was developing a rival to the iPod" due to issues in the translation into English.

Microsoft is not commenting on whether or not it is planning to release a portable music player of its own.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:08 am

Even if they were working on something it wouldn't be an iPod killer. More of a threat is the potential PDF killer that MicroSoft is putting into the next version of Word

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Biff said:

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

Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:20 pm

Wow nice segway.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:11 pm

Biff wrote:
Wow nice segway.

That is what Steve Jobs said when he first saw a Segway

Think about the spat over PDF and the upcoming XPS in Word. MicroSoft won't make it easy to create a PDF from Word, but push XPS will may not play friendly with programs such as InDesign or not be Mac compatible. Of course XPS will probably full of security problems.

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