Why is it that the dozens of digital audio player makers that try and make their living fighting over the relatively small number of people who aren’t buying iPods are fixated on competing with each other, rather than Apple?

I mean, if they were serious about winning away the increacing numbers of iPod owners who might be looking to upgrade, they’d support the unprotected AAC format that most iPod users have ripped their CD collection into.

Instead they support MP3 (because it’s ubiquitious), Microsoft’s WMA standard (because Microsoft has given them strong incentives to), and maybe the odd other format.

Why are they behaving in such a clueless manner? I suspect that Microsoft’s WMA licensing arrangement has something to do with it.