Apple, NBC at odds on pricing by Delia Cruceru

The "marriage" between Apple and NBC Universal is at its end. NBC decided not to renew the contract selling their TV shows with Apple's iTunes. On Friday Apple announced that they will no longer sell programs for NBC Universal through iTunes, because NBC decided to raise the price for downloading to more than a double of its actual price. Apple refused to set the price for downloading at $4.99, their current price is $1.99. "We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, said in a statement. According to a New York Times report, NBC Universal notified Apple of its decision late on Thursday, but they are trying to reduce the piracy preventing pirated material from being uploaded to Apple's popular iPod, as the discussions will continue until December when the contract ends. NBC Universal declared that they accounted about 40 percent of iTunes downloads, but Apple said that NBC accounted for 30 percent of sales of iTunes TV shows. A Forrester analyst James McQuivey said: "NBC doesn't feel like iTunes is critical to its future business. And Apple doesn't feel like NBC is critical to their business going forward -- I think they're wrong."

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by Delia Cruceru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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