A QuickTime strategy behind iTunes for Windows?

As Steve Jobs announced in April, Apple's iTunes Music Store will be available for Windows users by the end of the year. That implies that iTunes will be developed and released for Windows. That has been confirmed by a job request posted by Apple on Monsters.com as well as by Apple itself, though we have not seen sight of any real iTunes builds from Apple yet.

After several discussions with some sources that have some information related to Apple's strategy (some of them had also helped me to gather information about Apple Europe recently), we concluded that iTunes is not only being ported to Windows to give PC users access to the iTunes Music Store and enjoy their iPod.

Another rather unknown reason why Apple would like to port iTunes to Windows is related to QuickTime. Apple's audio-video media player had been very popular until mid-90s when there was still no competition. But although it's widely used on Mac OS, it has been rapidly supplanted by Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Real's RealOne Player on Windows. Each of these companies have their own proprietary containers and codecs though Real is more committed to open standards and partnerships than Microsoft which uses exclusively its own codecs and containers.

So where is the connection between the port of iTunes to Windows and QuickTime? Actually there is a technical connection between these two applications as QuickTime is used by iTunes as an engine to encode and decode audio in different formats like AIFF, MP3 and AAC. This technical connection has been enhanced with recent versions of QuickTime. For example, QuickTime 6.2 adds further integration with iTunes 4. So, as you may have guessed, iTunes is totally dependent of QuickTime and it's obvious that running iTunes requires QuickTime to be installed on your computer whether it's a Mac or a Windows PC. Though it's still technically possible to make a standalone iTunes, Apple will probably not chose this way.
Now let's suppose that iTunes for Windows has only a portion of the success that WinAmp MP3 player had. If every Windows user that wants to install iTunes has to install QuickTime to run it, it will certainly help Apple to considerably increase its market share in media content players and, by the way, impose the codecs it chooses. It would not be surprising then, that iTunes for Windows installer comes bundled with a QuickTime package for Windows users that don't have it already installed. I also believe that few or none of the Windows users that don't have QuickTime installed yet will refuse to install it to be able to enjoy iTunes, as Apple's audio content player has already become the most famous Apple killer iApp in the PC world, even-though it is only available for the Mac at the moment.

That strategy could even go further. Some of you might have heard about that surprising deal allowing DELL to sell Apple's iPod on its online stores earlier this year. The result of the release of iTunes for Windows could be a complete media content "buy-mix-burn" solution that any Windows PC maker would love to be able to offer to its customers. It would mean that Apple could easily deal with PC makers that target the consumer market to make them sell Windows PCs with QuickTime, iTunes pre-installed and with an option to buy an iPod on their stores. Actually, you should think of iTunes as if it was a kind of Trojan horse to the PC world, allowing Apple to impose its standards, it's digital music player while attracting PC users to the Mac world.

I know I have already mentioned this several times in my earlier postings, but I think it's important to regularly mention when something appears to be wrong in Apple's software. One of the reasons QuickTime's market share has been taken over by competition is the lack of the full screen feature on the free version of the player. It's the reason mentioned by all of my PC-friends when I asked them why they don't have QuickTime. I had predicted that this feature would come with QuickTime included in Panther but on the first builds I could play with I noticed it's still not here and I'm quite disappointed by that. On recent versions Apple has even removed standard MPEG-2 codec and it's something I found definitely ridiculous and perplexing.

To finish, I would like to state that this article is not based on speculation but, on real facts and thoughts expressed by verified sources. I think it was important to specifically state this because such articles can easily be interpreted as merely an extrapolation of random fragments of information. If you have opinions, suggestions or further information don't hesitate to drop a mail.