The WSJ reported Amazon’s plans to offer an Amazon-branded iPod competitor and digital music download store. I haven’t done much work in this area yet, so please weigh in, but this strikes me as a startlingly bad move.
First, Amazon’s entry into this business is shockingly and annoyingly late. As with the Netflix DVD business, Amazon could have owned this category, but in the name of moving deliberately (or of trying to become all things to all people), it allowed other competitors to build a dominant market position. No matter what the company says, winning significant market share in digital music is going to be much harder now than it would have been three years ago.