Microsoft’s Steve Balmer doesn’t know if the Zune is coming or going. The portable media player hasn’t knocked the iPod off its perch in its two-year run, and now Balmer recognizes that it may never.
Microsoft thinks that the market for stand-along media players—iPods, Zunes and the like—isn’t likely to see much growth going forward. That is, as most of us move onto smartphones that have multimedia functionality built-in—again, like the iPhone—we won’t be spending as much money on stand-alone players. Why would we, especially since we’re one more bank failure away from a barter economy?
The logical thing, then, would be to make a Zune phone. Only Microsoft won’t. That is, we shouldn’t “anticipate” a Zune phone. Instead, Microsoft sees software as its best bet into making a buck off the music business.
Perhaps Microsoft should have told some of its MacBU guys to create a proper Zune software solution for us Mac users. That would have gone a long way to convince to try it out, rather than thinking, “Bah, they use Macs they’ll never use a Zune.” Nice defeatist thinking.
Photo: Flickr
Is this serious? You really think it is worth their time trying to get Mac users to use their product? First, Mac represents a very low percentage of computer users and second, people who are on macs are there because they like the mac UI. So if you owned the company would you waste lots of money going after a small percentage of people who will in all likelihood never user your product? I didn’t think so.
And they’re correct…the Zune will never beat the iPod. Apple has a pretty firm hold on that market, and it may be smart to not devote too much money to trying to knock them off.
Well, if only to go against the tide, I use a Macbook Pro and iMac and I have a Zune and an iPod. But the Zune is definitely my preferred media player. The interface is much better. The store and Windows-only software could use some changes but the device is pretty solid. With iTunes going DRM-free in the next couple months, I’ll be interested to see how easily I can transfer those files to my Zune.
Zune phone would only need three keys, control,alt,delete !
HA. It’s funny because it’s TRUE.
I had a Zune for a few years now, and have never had it freeze, crash or erase all my songs off the player. In the 9months I had an iPod before that I had uncountable freezings, crashings, and I can’t count how many times I had re-sync all my music to the damn thing.
Just saying that the Zune is a much better player in my experience and has been supported many times by my friends who still clutch to their new, yet malfunctioning iPods.
The Control+Alt+Delete joke is really only valid towards Windows. Zunes are fine and, in my experience, only freeze when you trust LimeWire to give you content that is corrupted. Which has only happened once to my 120gb.
wow mike. If your going to say something you might as well TRY to make it intelligent. I think the Zune interface is much smoother than the Ipod. Also users with dial-up that live in rural areas like myself cant even use an Ipod due to the gigantic updates they unleash every few days. in fact i bought an ipod at first but due to one such update it wouldnt let me use it unless i updated it and i ended up with a 250 dollar brick. Then i got the Zune and after the software got done installing(a couple minutes) i was able to use it. also the zune allows you to connect with others computers as a guest instead of the Ipod, when my friend tried to hook his ipod to my computer it threatened to delete all of his data because it was a new computer and when he declined it disconnected it from the computer. Bottom line is the Zune is easier to use and we dont have to worry about a new model coming out every couple of months making our obsolete. A Zune phone would be much better than the Iphone. and for those of you that say Apple has already cornered the market just remember thats what people said about PC when MAC was releasing new computers and now there cathing up. It may take a while but eventualy people will start to realize just how much better the Zune really is.
I think a zune phone would be AWESOME!! I’d buy it. i love my zune and i hate i-pods they are dumb. Besides i think it would be a money maker.
I agree, the zune phone would probably even be one of the coolest things on the market.
I believe that it would be more effective to have a zune phone especially since zune does not crap out quite as much as an Ipod. They also are harder to break and the touch-pads are not as definitive as the Ipod. Sure you have to reset it every now and then, but that is a big difference compared to getting an entirely new device that costs a couple hundred bucks. Not to mention having your warranty expire the day before, so having to pay for it is even more of a bare
Well for me i think the zune is way lot better than the ipod…. like really… there’s no use in shaking a mp3 player or flipping it on its side to choose a song. If you shake the ipod it might fly off your hands, because everything has a draw back. Flipping it on its side might fall… shaking it will fly off your hand’s.