2007: A year in review, April

PS3 sales slump, Google goes on a spree and Apple and EMI revolutionise the download biz

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NEWS: 27 December 2007 11:00 GMT by Katie Scott

The month started with a massive announcement for the music download industry.

Apple and EMI announced DRM-free iTunes Plus offering copyright protection free music through Apple's iTunes music store.

It meant for the first time, customers could buy tracks from the store and copy them freely to other devices.

In a follow-up poll amongst Pocket-lint readers, 62% of you told us you welcomed the change and said that you were prepared to pay extra for DRM-free music.

Meanwhile, in the world of gaming, one of the biggest launches of the year so far, the PS3, suffered a dramatic sales drop-off just a fortnight after its unveiling.

Chart Track, the company that records sales of games and consoles, reported that the sales of PS3 hardware dropped by 82% in their second week, while games sales also slumped.

"It seems that those who wanted one, bought one. Sony's trouble now will be to convince those unsure to pay the high price", an industry insider told us.

Prices cuts followed while in the US the 20GB PS3 was discontinued.

But Sony said "pah". CEO Howard Stringer stated that almost 800,000 units were sold in Europe, adding: "I think [in] the first 2 days in the UK, £100m/US$199m revenue changed hands and that's probably the largest consumer electronics sale in history".

Apple also made a big boast this month announcing it had sold 100 million iPods in five and a half years, which according to the computer manufacturer makes the iPod the fastest selling music player in history.

However, three days later, it added that the development of another product expected to have a similar impact as the iPod, the iPhone, had delayed the launch of its next operating system OS 10.5 (codenamed Leopard) until October.

Google announced that it had bought DoubleClick for a cool
$3.1 billion in cash - its biggest buy to date.

But Microsoft immediately hit out stating the acquisition raised "serious competition and privacy concerns in that it gives the Google DoubleClick combination unprecedented control in the delivery of online advertising, and access to a huge amount of consumer information by tracking what customers do online".

The deal is still being looked at by regulatory bodies in the EU and US.

Meanwhile, Google launched a rival to checkout system PayPal.

And finally, 350,000 Londoners working in the Square Mile got to take advantage of one of the most advanced wireless broadband access systems in the world.