The Starbucks page on Apple.com has disappeared driving speculation about the “lucrative” deal being terminated, or in a “transitional” phase. While this wouldn’t affect Apple too adversely, seeing as how the deal didn’t garner much attention to begin with, the impact on Starbucks could be greater.
Engadget points out that the Starbucks page on Apple’s website is mysteriously “stone-cold gone, redirecting to the standard iTunes 8 stuff.” Many of you might not have noticed, and we get that. But fresh off of Starbucks’ huge corporate cutback, many could argue that the coffee giant might be trying to free themselves of their commitment to rolling out an iTunes WiFi Music Store integration across its entire cookie-cutter chain.
According to Apple’s press release dated September 5th, 2007, Apple and Starbucks were creating “an exclusive partnership that lets customers wirelessly browse, search for, preview, buy and download music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks onto their iPod Touch, iPhone, or PC or Mac running iTunes while at a participating location.” Due to the nation’s cutback on all things luxury, including the $4.00/day latte, this formal merging of minds (and corporate giants) might never happen.
Perhaps Apple might just be playing down an agreement that has now been in place for a full year- that never quite came to fruition. Who knows?….The dead link to Starbucks’ iTunes FAQ page might have absolutely NOTHING to do with their current financial woes. If so, another grand idea bites the dust. As usual, Apple has yet to comment on the dead-end project.
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One Comment to “Starbucks No Longer On Apple’s Website, What Does This Mean?”
maybe because starbucks is working with microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001633
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