Zune Under Fire - Zune Team’s Bunker Mentality
Looking around the Internet, it seems that Zune is really under fire. Very few people seem to like it. I can’t say I’m surprised. So, with the Zune taking flack from all sides, how are the Zune team and Zune fans reacting?
Looks like they might be feeling the heat, because it appears that the beginning of a bunker mentality is emerging. Take this example, from the Zune Insder:
Despite the iFanboy pleas that Zune is DOA; it’s tanking, brown is ugly, etc, I can tell you that we are exactly where we hoped we’d be.
Note how people who criticize Zune are marked out as Apple fanboys; and the claim that sales are exactly what the team hoped they’d be. Of course, the Zune team is privy to accurate sales figures, so the sales performance might be impressive. As an outside observer, though, it looks like Zune sales were just about OK for the first few days, but then plummeted to almost nothing (Brown Zune is now down to #501 in the Amazon chart).
A comment on the ZuneInsider blog says,
If you have a team of very intelligent people backed by unlimited money and resources, you have a good chance of creating something amazing
Indeed. So what went wrong? I wonder if anyone in the Zune team will step up the plate and take responsibility? Or will they simply retreat into their bunker, and try to put a positive spin on poor sales, poor reviews, and a poor product that doesn’t deliver to customer expectations?
jbelkin wrote:
“If you have a team of very intelligent people backed by unlimited money and resources, you have a good chance of creating something amazing.”
Really MS? So $4 Billion spent on MSN? The untold billions spent on the watch OS, Talking barney, webTV - all equally amazing? - money spent automatically means amazing?
Or $14 BILLION spent on Xbox? That’s probbaly about 28 times the R&D Apple spent on creating the ipod … which is more amazing?
That’s what wrong with MS - MONEY does NOT equal AMAZING.
Posted 26 Nov 2006 at 10:11 pm ¶