Apple attains rights to iTunes domain for New Zealand

After Japan, Apple seems to be looking at the Australasia market for their iTunes digital music store as they have just acquired rights to the domain name tunes.co.nz domain name from a Dunedin businessman who first registered the web address. This comes just days after international brand Coca-Cola launched CokeTunes, a big music download site for New Zealanders

This is supposed to be the first in the region allowing web users to sign up and pay for music downloads using their mobile phones, though only if they are a Telecom customer. Apple approached Dunedin’s Dave Goosselink who owned the domain earlier this year. Dave was using the website to sell Apple’s iPod devices purchased through the international Amazon web store.

Dave said that apple has made suitable reimbursement for the domain and he is happy with the deal. He also said that the domain has been transferred to the Apple Corp. however, Apple on their part has not commented on this acquisition or any of their plans to launch the iTunes music store in the region. Apple is well known to be secretive in their approach to any new product or service launch. They already have control over the domain for the Australia region when they acquired itunes.com.au domain.

If apple goes ahead with the launch in New Zealand, they would be facing competition from the recently launched CokeTunes having access to 570,000 songs and the local entity Kiwi-owned Digirama having 73,000 songs in its catalogue.