Whuh-oh, there's trouble a-brewin' in the Far East, folks-- trouble spelled W-A-R. But before you get all worked up about it, there are two good reasons not to panic. The first is that it's not the kind of war where a bunch of people get shot at with inevitably icky consequences; it's a war between makers of digital music players, which we expect leads to considerably less loss of life. And the second is that it's Creative, makers of those Zen and Nomad doohickeys, declaring war against Apple. No, honestly! Faithful viewer Ken Drake forwarded us an article in The Register which quotes Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo as saying "the MP3 war has started and I am the one who has declared war."

"So what?" you might well ask, give that the last sales numbers we'd seen were from September and showed that the iPod line had a 90.9 percent share compared to Creative's 2.6 percent. With numbers like that, we're basically looking at the other side of the Windows-vs.-Mac relative proportions, and as we all know, if Apple were to declare war on Windows tomorrow, everyone would just stifle a chortle and try to avoid eye contact. So what could Apple possibly have to fear from Sim Wong Hoo's chest-thumping warmongering?

Well, we'll tell you. See, there's just one problem with that 90.9 percent figure: it represents the iPod's share of hard drive-based players sold, and if you mix in all those dinky flash-based players as well, then Apple has "only" 65.8 percent of the market. And if you think it still sounds like Creative's taking on a lost cause, well, we lied; there are actually two problems, the second of which being that all those figures are for U.S. sales only. See, contrary to popular belief (at least the popular belief of Americans, and let's face it-- who else matters?), there are actually other countries out there somewhere. We know... spooky, right? What's more, people in those other countries apparently buy portable digital music players, and most of those players aren't made by Apple.

The bottom line is that when you look at Apple's global market share for digital music players, it's reportedly a mere 17 percent-- compared to Creative's 10 percent. So yeah, Apple's ahead, but not by anywhere near the amount that the U.S. numbers imply, and Creative's goal of overtaking Apple isn't quite as absurd as you might have thought. Creative has promised to "spend some serious money" ($100 million, it seems) in order to "out-market everyone," Apple included. Spent wisely, that kind of cash really could steal four market share points from Apple pretty quickly to win Creative the lead-- maybe not by the end of the year, like the psychotically optimistic Sim Wong Hoo thinks, but in six months? Twelve? It's entirely possible.

Then again, it's not like Apple's just standing still on the battlefield. The good news here is that the main reason why the Creative-vs.-Apple numbers are so much closer worldwide than in the U.S. is because, as faithful viewer Josh Lockie informs us, in Asia, flash-based players reign supreme, and by a huge margin. So if the rumored flash-based iPods do indeed surface early next year and they're half as slick as their big brothers are (and really, why wouldn't they be? It's DNA, after all), Creative really may have bitten off more than it can chew-- or even more than it can stuff into its piehole with the aid of a shoehorn, a plunger, and four extra hands. Stay tuned, and we'll all see if this really does turn out to be a war, or just Creative getting its kiester handed to it on a paper plate.

Since we've broached the topic of global thermonuclear war (at least of the MP3 player variety), what say we check it with the other Apple-related stuff happening in diverse non-U.S. parts of the world? Believe it or not, between trade shows, retail store openings, and the iTunes Music Store's inexorable expansion, there's actually a fair bit with which to kill some airtime while we wait for the serious drama to kick in. So make sure your safety belts are fastened low and tight across your lap and stow your tray tables in their full and upright position, because we're taking you on a whirlwind tour of every country on the planet!

We've already been in Singapore for the Creative guy's declaration of war, so now let's jet over to the UK, where they've got a trade show called MacExpo currently underway. You may not have heard of it unless you're a local, but as faithful viewer John Whitehead points out, MacExpo may be smaller than that January shindig in San Francisco, but it still probably makes Macworld Expo Boston look like a guy selling pretzels from a cart by comparison.

The real news, though, is the imminent launch of the UK's first Apple retail store, and according to the Apple press release, it's slated to open its doors this Saturday, so we hope the Londoners out there are already in line. And while we already knew about the second UK store planned in Birmingham, faithful viewer gbois tipped us off to a BBC report confirming that Apple's also got a store in Kent coming next year-- and "plans to open stores in continental Europe in 2005." If we had to bet, our money would be on a Paris store opening next summer during or around Apple Expo, but that's just a guess.

(By the way, the Beeb also notes that the Apple Store Regent Street won't have enough iPods to go around. Seriously, guys, queue up now.)

From the UK we wing our way to Canada-- where the iTunes Music Store still isn't open yet, so we keep right on flying to Japan. Granted, there isn't an iTMS there yet either, and at least Canada has an announcement to cling to, but CNET is now reporting that the iTMS Japan is slated for a launch "by March 2005" with an initial catalog of just 100,000 songs-- which would apparently still make it the "largest music download service in Japan." Of course, none of this info comes from Apple, nor has the company commented on the information, which originally appeared in the Nihon Keizai newspaper. So take it with a grain of salt, but feel free to engage in a little cautious optimism.

So let's see, here... Singapore, the UK, Canada, Japan... yup, that's all of 'em! We hope you enjoyed our whirlwind tour of every country on the planet; please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened until the show has come to a complete stop and the producers turn off the seat belt light. And no, you don't get any extra peanuts.

Ah, there's nothing like news that's not news-- and six months after it wasn't news the first time. Pardon us while we wander slightly off-topic, here, but as you all know, Steve's other company Pixar, which is currently making Disney a ridiculous amount of money with The Incredibles and will no doubt make Disney another ridiculous amount of money with next year's Cars, is free of its Disney contract at the end of next year, and through third parties Steve has intimated that he would only consider re-upping with The Mouse if The Jerk (otherwise known as Michael Eisner) gets The Boot. Eisner has since announced his intention to "retire"-- in September of 2006, long after Apple will have had to find a new distribution partner. At this point, we don't think it's too likely that Disney will get free money from every new Pixar flick in the post-Cars era.

And so onto the non-news: faithful viewer N Gray forwarded us a CNN article that reveals that Disney is "actively proceeding with a second sequel to Pixar Animation's Toy Story franchise," with zero Pixar involvement. The thing is, everybody knows that Disney's always had the right to do that under the terms of the current contract, and way back in May we mentioned that Eisner had admitted publicly that Disney has "several sequels in the works to the blockbuster films Pixar has created for the company"-- and even then it wasn't really news, since Eisner was just "confirming earlier company statements," so Disney's been pretty open about the plan for ages and ages. Apparently the only change now is that Disney is currently "setting up a digital animation facility" to crank out its inevitably bland butcher-job on the Toy Story characters, so there's basically no turning back.

CNN reports that Disney's active pursuit of this blatant cash-grab "could make it more difficult for the two companies to extend their rocky relationship," but frankly, we don't really see how things could have been made much worse; it's clearly an Eisner move, and Steve already knows that Eisner's a tool. Consider how different Michael Eisner's plane of existence is from our own: faithful viewer Whybird dished us a Reuters article describing his courtroom testimony in a shareholder lawsuit over the $140 million severance package that Michael Ovitz got after fourteen months as Disney president. Now, we're not defending Ovitz or anything, but does anyone else see the irony when Eisner says "he started to rub people the wrong way... he was controversial and it got worse as things went on"?

Not insane enough for you? Okay, then try this one on for size (but prepare yourself, 'cause it's a doozy): "in a series of conversations that Eisner described as 'unimaginable,' he said Ovitz repeatedly refused to acknowledge that it was time to leave. 'If someone ever said to me they didn't want me around, I would be out of there after half of the sentence,' he said."

Wow.

Seriously, that statement betrays an appalling lack of self-awareness. There are entire web sites dedicated to getting Eisner to step down, the most well-known being the one run by Walt Disney's own freakin' nephew. Eisner received a 45 percent vote of no confidence from Disney's shareholders earlier this year-- the largest in history by far, and the clearest mandate a CEO could receive to get out of dodge short of an arrow through the head. Everyone who'd know says that Steve Jobs would consider keeping Pixar at Disney-- a deal that represents billions of dollars of revenue for the Mouse House-- if Eisner would just leave already. And now the guy's claiming that no one ever asked him to go? Yikes. Is there any doubt why Steve Jobs doesn't want to work with him?