2236 Macworld UK and Wired News are reporting that an official spokesman for Hewlett-Packard has rejected claims that an HP-branded version of Apple's iPod would support the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. WMA is a propriety format of Microsoft and is unsupported in the current iPod.

From Wired's story:

"We're not going to be supporting WMA for now," said Muffi Ghadiali, product marketing manager for HP's digital entertainment products group.

"We picked the service that was the most popular (Apple's iTunes Music Store)," said Ghadiali. "We could have chosen another format, but that would have created more confusion for our customers."

This should come as no surprise. Not only would Apple (or HP) not want to pay Microsoft a licensing fee to enable WMA on the HP iPod, but it could concievably hurt direct sales for Apple as well. If you were a PC user, and knew there was a device out there with the guts of the most popular music player, connected to the most popular online music store, but also supported an additional music format, which one would you buy?

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.

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