HMV joins hands with Microsoft for downloading service

HMV joins hands with Microsoft for downloading service

Apple iTunes has even more competition on their hands. HMV has joined hands with Apple’s primary challenger in the digital music stores market Microsoft. They would be developing a digital downloading service and enter in the already cluttered market of online music stores. Their music store would offer consumer software which would let them hear, download and buy the songs at their homes and even at the HMV stores.

They are also planning to support Microsoft’s initiative called PlayForSure as they would allow the songs to be played on more than 75 digital music players. Of course, as per Apple’s policies… HMV cannot add support for iPod. To add even more to Apple’s misery, HMV is considering stop selling iPod on their stores.

HMV is expected to invest around 10 million pounds on this project and expect to release it to public in the second half of next year. This would mean Apple has quite sometime to tackle this expected competition in the future as they plan to keep their domination in both the music player and music sales market on the internet. Their iPod and iTunes are both extremely successful and competition is finding it hard to match up to it.

This latest news gave a boost to the value of HMV shares in the stock markets.