Apple Confirms 3rd Party Licencing Fee

apple-chipA couple of days ago some news broke which mentioned a chip that was found in the Apple iPod Shuffle headphones. Speculation started appearing that Apple were intending to licence 3rd party accessories for the Shuffle… were they correct?

Yes they were. A program called “Made for iPod” either has been created or has been around for a while and we just didn’t know. The headphones built for Shuffles by 3rd parties will now need to pay a licence to work. The proprietary chip would be used to allow the headphones to function… I guess this will also mean that Apple need to pre approve 3rd party goods too making sure they are up to a certain standard.

Apparently the chip isn’t encrypted or locked down though which could mean that a number of companies decided to bypass the licence fee and just make a clone of the chip. No doubt Apple will be chasing those that take that route.

Via: UberReview

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