Zune Who?
Remember how the Microsoft Zune was all set up to be an Apple killer? How “the Social” with WiFi sharing (DRM’s to three plays, of course) was going to blow the iPod out of the water and eat up Apple’s market share?
Okay, you’ve have long figured out that the Zune did no such thing. But Microsoft was shouting from the rooftops some big news a few weeks ago: we sold out two millionth Zune!!! Wow! Two million Zunes! What an accomplishment! Even better than June last year, when the Zune hit the one-million mark ahead of schedule! Two million Zunes in just over eighteen months! Never mind that Apple sold 76 million iPods in the same time period (not including iPhone sales). Never mind that The iPod is sold worldwide, while the Zune is still a U.S.-only product (though Canada is getting the Zune soon!). Never mind that the Zune is not growing in sales–they sell 1 million units every nine months, no increase.
Dan Dilger, although biased, does a pretty thorough job explaining how and why the Zune is stuck in nowhere’s-ville.
But Microsoft is not done yet, not by a long shot! They’ve got a Big New Idea, coming soon! Bigger than selling Zunes in Canada! Is it a Zune Phone? No. Touch-screen Zune? No. Zune in a few more colors? Maybe, but not this time. No, the big new idea to make the Zune break out is… Ads! Yes, Microsoft is making the Zune even better by adding ads to the Zune Social web site, and maybe bringing ads to the Zune itself!*
How could anyone resist that! Eat our dust with your puny 3G iPhone in more than five dozen countries across the world, Apple!
*Unfortunately, I am not making this up.
I would just add the fact that I was apparently wrong when I first wrote about the Zune. I said that Microsoft releases crap at first, but then keeps improving it until it gets better. Now, I am not so sure. Look at Vista–definitely a step down from XP. And the Zune, while looking better today, is backsliding relative to Apple’s products. Look where Apple is going with the iPod Touch and iPhone relative to the iPod 18 months ago (similar to the current iPod Classic), and whatever improvements have come to the Zune (flash-based iPod Nano rip-offs, a shinier and slightly thinner case), the basic features of the Zune have not improved much at all. In the meantime, the iPod got web browsing, email, and a hi-res touchscreen above and beyond catching up with what features the Zune had and the iPod didn’t, before.
And while the Zune has no foreseeable feature upgrades aside from the addition of advertisements (what the?), Apple is about to add a huge feature to the iPod and iPhone: apps, software playable on the handheld unit. Games, utilities, whatever anyone can imagine to put on it. (Not to mention the 3G and possible GPS. Oh, and probably a second camera for video conferencing.) True, jailbroken iPhones already have a ton of apps, but this time it’s official. Apple continues to zoom ahead while MS stagnates.
I swear, MS seems to be in its death throes–they can’t even copy Apple very well anymore, and that was always their chief strength.
I’m one of the poor saps stuck with Vista. I think they had a similar problem with millenium. My guess is they will push Vista to the side and release a more advanced version of XP.
Anyway, they getting closer to the point where they are going to have to start giving the stuff away. ten years from now we’ll all be using open sourced stuff (except for Apple, of course).
Read the Dilger article–they’re already at that stage, with the Zune at least.