Apple after the bell 9/27/06: Apple loses iTunes content

Posted Sep 27th 2006 6:22PM by Tobias Buckell
Filed under: After the Bell, Bad News, Products and Services, Industry, Competitive Strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL), iPhone

Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) ended the day at $76.41, down $1.20 or 1.55% after having a very strong week of gains that made me wonder yesterday if we'd be seeing $80 soon.

Certainly there are a lot of positives, with iPhone mania and scuttlebutt starting up, but Apple is generating some negative buzz with its attack on all things 'pod.' Use the words iPod and podcasting and Apple comes after you. Is this a reasonable attempt to protect trademarks, or is Apple going a bit overboard?

Add to that the fact that Apple is battling its media providers, with one of them yanking content worth 10,000 downloads a day from the iTunes store. It's the Major League Baseball radio podcast that people can download for free, but the reason it was yanked was due to Apple's uncooperative interactions with MLB, something many media companies report being dissatisfied with. Apple needs to mend some of these relationships as it tries to woo large studios to host their movies for download.

Tags: apple, cingular iphone, CingularIphone, iphone, major league baseball radio, MajorLeagueBaseballRadio, podcasting, podcasts