New iPod Range Raises Bar For Zune
From the refreshed shuffle, through the new video-playing iPod nano and iPod touch (not forgetting the newly price iPhone) through to the wireless iTunes store (buy your music on impulse, right on your iPod touch/iPhone, no computer required), Apple has just raised the bar for Microsoft’s Zune platform. Here are the new iPods Apple announced yesterday (see Engadget for details).
By way of comparison, here’s the new special limited edition Zune that Microsoft announced yesteday.
I’m not quite sure what the Zune team was thinking here. If the soon-to-be-announced new Zune products look anything like this, then the Zune platform is in even bigger trouble that I’d previously thought. Time for Zune to really step up its game, or see what market share it has erode. As of today, if someone is in the market to buy a music player, I can’t see why they’d choose anything other than an iPod…
Asam Bashir wrote:
What’s even more amazing then the iPod range itself is the retail penetration they’ve managed to achieve, where there used to be rows and rows of hifi components they are now replaced by rows and rows of iPod accessories. This as I’ve said before is the main reason the Zune is a dead platform. Microsoft doesn’t have the influence it commands in the PC component world with these accessories manufacturers so market forces have followed, and the fittest has survived and continues to evolve…..
Bill Gates and Steve Balmer must now leave Microsoft for good and allow a new management team to remold Microsoft with a new philosophy and a new set of business ethics.They’ve lost the music player market, the Wii is slapping the Xbox silly, Vista is a sad joke. The most profitable part of Microsoft, the MacBU, is being strangled from the top and the reasons for delaying the universal version of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X are sinister at best, but more likely malicious.
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 3:27 pm ¶
Xavier Itzmann wrote:
Can you imagine the product teams at Zune, Nokia, etc., planning for months to launch products at the $500 niche, thus undercutting the 8GB iPhone by $100?
Some though decisions are being discussed today…
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 4:48 pm ¶
simon wrote:
The really big problem at Microsoft is that they have some really big cash cows (Windows and Office); and that the management is terrified of doing anything that would hurt these.
I supect it’s the Zune Mk II products are the ones that will let us see if Microsoft knows what it’s doing in the portable music/video player business. Mk I has clearly failed; but it was never good enough to do anything other than fail. I reckon they have one more chance to get this right…
Posted 06 Sep 2007 at 5:51 pm ¶
Marc wrote:
I agree. Also from the point of view of anyone buying music online - I am far more likely to buy from Apple because I am confident they will always be producing a great MP3 player.
If you have a Zune now and buy music, and the Zune mk2 or mk3 are rubbish - you’d begin to wish you’d got an iPod, and of course all your music is DRMed to Zune.
Personally I see the iPod Classic as the best new iPod. The Touch doesn’t really appeal to me, I’d rather have a PDA and be able to get email/edit attachments/play chess
etc.. etc.. but the classic has a big hard disk and looks so good.
Still, my 30gb Video is doing just fine, and if it lasts 4 years like my 1st gen iPod (the battery went) I’ll be very happy indeed.
Posted 09 Sep 2007 at 6:35 pm ¶