Did Jobs woo Sony boss over iTunes anti-Gates love-in?

To throw a spanner in the works of Microsoft's arrival on the digital music scene, Apple wanted to sign a strategic agreement with Sony, Japanese daily Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun has revealed, quoting sources from Sony.

According to the sources, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made his offer to Nobuyuki Idei, head of Sony, in January during a round of golf organised by the Japanese firm in Hawaii. Apple, it seems, was ready to open up its iTunes music store so the downloads would also be compatible with Sony's digital music players.

Both Apple and Sony representatives declined to comment.

Currently, Cupertino has only opened its platform to customers with Apple's music player, the iPod, much to the chagrin of other players in the sector, including RealNetworks. In the mobile space, it also licensed its technology to phone maker Motorola to enable some handsets to play iTunes downloads.

Microsoft's music downloads, on the other hand, can be read by a far larger number of music players.

Before the Microsoft song shop opened its doors this month, Sony launched its own service, Sony Connect, hoping to repeat the iTunes plus iPod equals success equation with its digital music player, Network Walkman NW-HD1, linked to Sony Connect.

The Network Walkman NW-HD1 can only read one format - Atrac - with Sony unlikely to want to loosen its grip. It also has a tool called Sonic Stage which will let users convert non-protected MP3, WMA and WAV files into Atrac format.

Christophe Guillemin writes for ZDNet France