Amazon has ramped up its attack on Apple's iTunes by having links to its MP3 online music and movie store built into a 'Google phone' due out next month, an AFP report said.
Contrary to the way things are done at iTunes, digital music sold at Amazon MP3 store isn't shackled with digital rights management (DRM) software that prevents people from copying tunes or moving them between devices.
'Amazon arguably has the best DRM-free music service out there and it is a coup that Google got them,' analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley, quoted by the AFP report, said.
'It is very aggressive. They are seriously targeting Apple. They want to break that monopoly Apple has with iTunes.'
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has cited industry statistics saying that iTunes is the largest music seller in the world.
Amazon MP3 launched a year ago with an online music catalogue listing more than two million songs from more than 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels, including EMI Music and Universal Music Group.
Amazon's music download store is similar to offerings from Apple, Real Networks, and retail behemoth Wal-Mart.
Amazon boasts that MP3 store tunes can be played 'on virtually any personal digital music-capable device,' including Apple's iPods and iPhones and Microsoft's Zune line of players.