Move over iTunes, Samsung wants a piece

Trying to improve sales of its portable music players, Samsung, said on Thursday it will offer technical support to its online music partners such as Napster and Yahoo Music.

Samsung would be following Apples example. By offering iPod owners an easy way to download music, store it on their PC and then transfer it to the music player for playback, iTunes, Apple Computer’s online content download service, has helped drive sales of iPod music players because the service and related software.

“I believe our music players are compatible with iPod but our partners have failed to provide competitive software like iTunes,” said Choi Gee-sung, the president of Samsung’s digital media division.

As Samsung attempts to compete with the ever dominant Apple iPod, the company is aiming to boost MP3 player sales to more than 5 million units this year. But unfortunately for Samsung, that goal is just a sixth of the expected 2005 sales of Apple which is estimated to have about 70 percent of the digital music device and music download market.