Microsoft To Release 'iPod Killer' at Christmas?

ShellFish writes "According to a report from Engadget, Microsoft is poised to finally take on the Apple iPod this holiday season. Tired of uninspiring offerings from its hardware partners, Microsoft is getting into the ring itself. The new media player from Microsoft will feature a bigger screen than the iPod Video, have built-in WiFi for downloading music without a PC, and Microsoft will work with music and TV content providers to build an iTunes Music Store competitor. In what may be the crucial competitive stroke, Microsoft will also allow you to download from its store any song that you've purchased from Apple, unlocking users from iPod's vendor lock-in."

Comments

Woah

[voice_of_all_reason]

In what may be the crucial competitive stroke, Microsoft will also allow you to download from its store any song that you've purchased from Apple, unlocking users from iPod's vendor lock-in."

I'll assume the summary leaves out the crucial word "free" in there. If so, that's pretty damn clever. I just wonder how/if MS will get the music cartels to agree to it, other than wholescale bombing of their headquarters' into submission by the Windows Air Force.

Re:Woah

[Sentry21]

How long until someone figures out how to script a system whereby users can go to a website, input their iTunes user/pass, and force Microsoft's service to re-sync its library (at great expense to Microsoft)? Think of it - an automated way to screw Microsoft, just by putting in your user/pass!

Personally, I'm going to be encouraging everyone I know to sign up for the service and download the Microsoft versions of their iTunes libraries - and then cancel their subscription.

OGG?

[bakes]

Yes, that's all very well, but will it play my OGG files?

Re:Survey of High Schoolers: iPod not built to las

[AHumbleOpinion]

Forgive me if I don't take a secondhand version of a college project where students interviewed students as a reliable report on what the general consumer wants in a Mp3 player.

These were part-tme MBA students (ie worknig professionals by day) who had taken statistics and maketing and were working under the supervision of a professor who has been hired by large corporation to do just such studies. Now this was a class project, not a corporate sponsord project, so it was small scale and regional (southern California) compared to an Apple sponsored study but it included interviews, questionaires, and focus groups. The results are not so easily dismissed. The sample size was significant, distributions, p-values, and other sanity checks on the data were good.

You object to students being the segment studied? Have you seen Apple's commercials? This is Apple's target market.

You fail to mention the players the iPod was compared to.

The survey covered needs, wants, perceptions, and customer satisfaction for whatever portable digital player were used. It was not an iPod study per se, iPod was just the most common player.

You say lack of AM/FM is seen as a negative. But is it a missing feature that would influence a significant amount of people's buying decisions?

It was a recurring missing "want". As stated in the original posts, the respondents said that they traded this want for the "status symbol" nature of the iPod.

"(*) I expect Apple has similar research of their own and it probably inspired the Radio Remote. I'd wager future models will have it built in." I'll take that bet. I don't think those things are flying off the shelves. Seems more like a specialty add-on for the small minority who want it to me.

The fact that Apple introduced such a product undermines your argument. If Apple's research showed it to be such a niche product they would have left it to third parties.

You fail to mention the iTunes factor. It's not all about the hardware. How did that figure into this survey?

They did not like being unable to transfer the files, a general DRM problem. MP3s were the preferred format.

[sidebar] iTune isn't really much of a factor anyways. I believe Jobs once stated that the average customer spent US$70. Not much of a lock-in, but that's a different thread (literally). [/sidebar]

I can't stress enough that I do not own an iPod, or care to.

I own one, 2nd generation, the first that were available for PCs. I happy with it.

I just hate to see know-it-alls throw around pointless and and arbitrary surveys like this as data we should all respect.

Really, from reading your post it seemed that you disliked the results and made many erroneous assumptions to rationalize why you should reject the data. As I pointed out it seems consistent with Apple's behavior with respect to radio. It's small scale and regional, but it was done by knowledgeable people under the supervision of experts.