Samsung lands iPod chip contract...

Samsung on Wednesday said it has landed a contract to supply some of the internal components on the next generation iPod. The announcement comes days after longtime iPod supplier Portal Player said that Apple would not use its chips for its high-end future iPods, although it said Apple would continue to use them in the lower-end flash based iPods. Samsung's coup, the largest LSI chip order for the company, comes at the expense of Portal, which currently generates over 90 percent of its sales from Apple’s iPod, and other suppliers such as SigmaTel, Actions, and LSI Logic--all of whom were were also considered front-runners for the new iPod processor contract. Apple has already sold over 50 million iPods and may sell up to 35 million more by the end of 2006, according to analysts. Ironcally, Samsung also sells MP3 playes that compete with Apple's iPod and has been trying to gain marketshare with new product releases and turned to one of the original iPod architects for the design of its Z5 portable MP3 player.

Apple angles for Blu-Ray movies on iPods

Apple is rumored to be in talks with Sony and other studios to include iPod versions of movies on Blu-Ray releases. The Cupertino-based company joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in early March of 2005, which was created to broaden support for the High Definition disc format that offers five times the capacity of DVDs. Disney has also adopted the Blu-Ray disc format, and has worked with Apple on video content in the past. Apple's movie offering would expand greatly were it to convince Sony and Disney to add iPod support, according to Business 2.0 Magazine. Blu-Ray discs are easily large enough to store an iPod-ready copy of a High-Definition flick along with the full version, and though Apple would miss out on potential revenues from selling the movies via iTunes, having a massive offering of iPod-formatted movies available to consumers could mean more iPod sales.

MS says phones to dethrone iPod...

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes Apple's iPod will be dethroned by a new generation of mobile phones. "We will soon witness a lot of innovations and changes in portable devices," Ballmer said at a management forum in Berlin. "Portable music is not limited to iPods," the executive added. The head of Microsoft also believes competition with Google is an open opportunity, according to heise online. "Half of the time that we look for something, we don't find it. There is a lot of room for improvement," he explained. The actual innovation that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page unveiled was not the technological aspect of internet searches, according to the executive. "They were the first ones to realize the potential of online advertising. The Google business model is the actual innovation," Ballmer said.