The last few days, the internet has been ablaze with rumors about the Zune phone — actually, perhaps “ablaze” isn’t the right term. Perhaps “slightly hot to the touch” is more appropriate. I guess someone just had an unconfirmed rumor, and then some people talked about it. Well, this news should add fuel to the fire! Or, I suppose, maybe a fire will start.
Metaphors aside, the news is that Zune content may be coming to Nokia. This comes from “a well-placed source in Microsoft,” which probably amounts to a guy in package design seeing a Nokia phone sitting next to a Zune somewhere. If it is true, it might be interesting, as everyone saw a Zune phone as something that might piggyback on a WinMo platform, but that obviously wouldn’t happen at Nokia. Whether that makes the rumor more or less compelling is a matter of taste.
No one on the internet cares about the Zune phone, the Zune failed.
Eh – it sure failed to take over the market, but I don’t think it failed any more than the other alternative mp3 players did. It’s a nice little device, they’ve got a nice service set up, it just doesn’t have the volume of users iTunes does and nothing can change that. Although nothing can really touch the iPod Touch now…
Some months ago, Microsoft said that a Silverlight 2.0 VM was ported to Nokia smartphones. So they have an .Net framework, which opens porting Zune UI & homebrew on their devices.
Ok. All I can say is that Microsoft’s got its work cut out for itself. Not so much from a product standpoint; but from a public image perspective. Like how in the world are they going to make something new and enticiing when the iPhone all ready has taken the world by storm? If you ask anyone who’s technically savvy who’s leading the way, Apple or Microsoft.I think the answer would be clear.
Of course, the IT guys won’t mind waiting another two years.
If Microsoft is even considering making a Zunephone, they’d be wise to make it CDMA and pickup the pieces that the iPhone completely ignores.
Considering Nokia’s history with CDMA, I don’t think this rumor carries a lot of weight.
It will be more fun to see the ZunePhone go head to head against the iPhone in the same fashion the Zune went up against the iPod. Microsoft is already competing against the iPhone with its WinMo OS, so MS should concentrate on making it better. If MS started making specific hardware, I don’t think the other WinMo-using companies would be very happy about that. I don’t think we’ll see a ZunePhone any time soon. It would just be a waste of MS dollars.