A world where everything is the same as ours except for one tiny detail: Apple never came up with the iPod.

Imagine that! A universe where various personal players compete for dominance in a marketplace untouched by Apple’s iTunes/iPod combo. A world lacking in U2 and Red Hot Chili Peppers-branded iPods. A universe where the word “iPod” is not synonymous with personal digital players.

You can bet the folks at Microsoft wish there was such a world. Back when the Internet was first eyed as a music distribution vehicle, Microsoft stuck to its tried-and-true playbook of creating, then licensing, technology.

After all, this was the company that conquered the personal computing world by licensing an operating system to IBM and anyone else wanting to sell a computer compatible with Big Blue’s desktop, enabling Microsoft to collect a few pennies every time a non-Apple, DOS computer was sold. It was licensing that formed the foundation of the Microsoft empire, and it was licensing that transformed college dropout Bill Gates into the world’s most famous (and richest) nerd.

So when record labels and online stores needed a digital rights management technology to protect content sold and distributed on the Net, they turned to Microsoft, which gladly licensed its Windows Media Audio as freely as it had licensed its DOS operating system two decades earlier.

The residents of Microsoft Land must have had dollar signs in their eyes as they pictured millions upon millions of songs moving across the Internet while wrapped in Microsoft’s WMA envelopes – a brand new frontier where Microsoft not only dominated the desktop computer world but the music world as well.

Yes, there may be a world where Microsoft is at the top of the digital music biz, but it’s not our world.

But that doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t stop trying. The company’s MSN Music has been a minor online music player for the past few years, and just a few months ago Microsoft made some noise by partnering with MTV to create the online music store URGE. Now it looks as if Microsoft might actually live up to the rumors of the past couple of years and introduce its own music player.

Of course, Microsoft hasn’t said anything. At least not officially. However, the company has reportedly been talking to people in the record biz. And, while those execs haven’t exactly gone on record about the talks, enough have apparently employed the old anonymous source routine to tell the world what Microsoft has in mind.

Apparently the yet-unannounced Microsoft player will do just about everything the iPod can do, but better. We’re talking better-looking video and better-quality sound. However, so far there is one feature in the Microsoft player that has not yet been addressed by Apple.

That’s wireless, baby. A player that can wirelessly download songs means no FireWire or USB hookup between device and computer. A player that takes the computer out of the equation so the technophobes can rock like the rest of us. Hmmm… Microsoft just might have something there.

As of yet the details, heck, even the actual existence of the Microsoft player, are only rumors and hearsay. However, the current situation where online music stores work with a slew of players that are all similar but different in some ways hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. The iPod has 80 percent of the personal player market. You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to realize that by delivering the entire package – online store and player – in one box has made Apple king of the online music store hill.

But there’s always somebody wanting to knock off the king. Maybe that someone won’t be Microsoft, but it’s difficult to imagine anyone else with as much brain power and big bucks as good ol’ MSFT.