“RealNetworks has announced plans to raise $100m via a convertible bond offering, sparking rumours that it is planning a major acquisition. The company, which had $300m cash at the end of March, said it would use the new proceeds for general corporate purposes as well as acquisitions,” reports Susie Harwood for netimperative.com.
Harwood reports, “It bought Listen.com in April, and has since launched its own a jointly branded version of the company’s Rhapsody music download service at the same time as Listen.com slashed its download prices. However, the bond offering suggests that its appetite for acquisitions is not yet sated, and rumours are abound that it is considering making a bid for Roxio, which owns the infamous Napster brand, continuing the recent consolidation in the download market.” Full article here.
Isn’t this interesting? The plot thickens! Just this past Monday, LoopRumors.com reported that Apple was negotiating to buy Napster-owner Roxio. Wonder which company will end up with Roxio/Napster when the dust settles?
Why doesn’t Apple just gobble up Real AND Roxio and be done with it – they have the cash on hand? It’s time to OWN a market for once, Apple! Don’t fsck this one up, too!!!
I really hope realnetworks doesn’t buy roxio. I’m sure they would manage to turn toast and easy cd creator into just as big a piece of garbage as real’s current software.
No kidding, Real is useless. Worse yet, their management seems to be, um… ill-informed. From the latest Wired:
“With so many different [MP3] players out, the PC world borders on chaos. It’s not like with Macintosh, where there’s only the iPod to worry about.”
Looks like Roxio is the stock to buy now!
Please Real, do us all a favor and stay away from this one. God only knows what horror you will inflict on a perfectly good program (Toast). Ironically, I absolutely despise Easy CD Creator, even though they’re made by the same manufacture.
Can someone explain how a shitty non-money making company like Real can acquire anything in the first place?
Yeah, I remember I used to like the realplayer, but I hate it every single bit now. Thanks goodness for Apple and Quicktime. They can buy stuff because they don’t mind getting into more debt. They are selling bonds.
If they (real) does buy Roxio, I hope Apple makes their own CD burning software. I have Toast and I don’t want to imagine what real will do to it…..
Feld. Nice comment! I have always said why doesnt Apple buy out Real and own the market!
uhm, jason b, where have you been for like the last two years AT LEAST. Apple already has their own burning software, it’s built into OS X. There is not real front end to the burning software.
Have a burner connected
put a cd in
osx asks you what you want to do, then follow.
I have ALSO ALWAYS BELEIVED APPLE SHULD BUY ROXIO & REAL!
Apple bought NeXT for $400 Million for which they got a CEO and the new OS. I hope they don’t have to spend that much to suck in a few Windows apps and a online music store. The rumors are that the PC incarnation of the Apple Music Store may be up by the end of the month. The next two weeks should be very interesting for us.
The reason Toast doesn’t suck as much as “Easy Seedy Creator” is because it was originally written by Astarte, which then sold it to Adaptec (now Roxio). With Toast, they took something good and managed to not ruin it completely. With Easy CD, they were starting from nothing and it could only get worse from there
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