Apple obviously wants to become the biggest in the electronic music delivery world, and Vivendi's Universal wants to be art of it. The two signed a deal for two years, which was extended with on year, and is about to expire.

While Apple wanted to renew, Universal eagerly looks arount, because there might be another deal around with a better pricetag. As Internetnews's Andy Patrizio says :

The question is, what might that "something better" be? Market research firm The NPD Group said iTunes accounts for 76 percent of digital music sales. For that reason, said Van Baker, research director for Gartner, Universal really has nowhere to go.(Internetnews.com)

According to this report, iTunes is third in line in terms of music retailing, which means iTunes can be seen as a big player. Apple has quite some power, as shown by the reluctance to change prices (every tune costs 99 cts while labels prefer lower prices for older tunes and so on), and I believe they should be taken very seriously as a retailer.




A very good read is here.
The full article from internetnews.com is here.