HP and Apple today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPod, and iTunes to HP’s customers. As part of the alliance, HP PCs and notebooks will come preinstalled with iTunes and “an easy-reference desktop icon” to point consumers directly to the iTunes Music Store. HP’s digital music player is expected to become available this summer and be priced “competitively to other digital music players currently available.” Beginning this summer, iTunes will be preloaded on HP Pavilion, Media Center and Compaq Presario desktop and notebook consumer PCs.