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iPod Has Nothing To Fear From Slow-Starting Zune
narramissic writes, "Looks like Apple's iPod has nothing to fear from Zune this holiday season. In a research note published Tuesday, PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster writes that 'during its launch week on Nov. 16, Zune held the seventh spot on online retailer Amazon.com's top 10 best-selling MP3 players list, and it fell from that spot to 13 on the list only five days after launch, on Nov. 20.' Even worse, only 8% of retailers surveyed by PiperJaffray recommend the Zune to customers, while 75% recommend Apple's iPod." The article notes Apple's 5-year headstart in the portable player market and Microsoft's stated intention to invest heavily in the Zune over the next several years.
Did M$ plan on having a flop out of the gate, planning on 2nd and 3rd generations to really go after the iPod? M$ never gets anything right the first time, so maybe it's not a big deal to them that it flopped?
How many Windows iPods were sold a few weeks after they hit the market?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Unfortunately the Zune seems to offer very little, and the feature that it should be known for takes a LONG time to implement. Sharing a song with another zune is as easy as the path the pinball takes on the sesame street number song.
It takes like a minute to share (squirt) a zune song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpHzQYKDlWU [youtube.com]
The thing I was wondering is this. I do not mind the squirting feature, it seems neat and probably could have been implemented in a more intuitive way (IE have a squirt button instead of traversing 3 menus and a submenu) but the idea itself is "ok." Though I do have a problem with "squirting" a song in reference to a player that looks like it was molded in shit.
So they have some possibilities for cool features! They have wireless... why do they not leverage it in more interesting ways.
As you can see in the video they can see other zune players, in fact it seems incredibly intuitive.
Now lets say that it is true wifi and could probably support 5 or 6 streams coming out of it... why do they not have some kind of "Zune broadcast" feature were people can look at zunes, see what they are broadcasting or who they are listening too, and let people tap into the music that way... maybe even have some sort of re-broadcast peer to peer feature were each zune re-broadcasts what it is playing if someone wants to listen to the same song...
This way if you knew a lot of zune friends you could have them sample the song before you squirt it into their zune... though even talking about the zune and squirting makes me kind of uncomfortable.
Also, since it has wifi, why do they not provide a program that lets your computer do the same thing... IE submit to someones current audio stream.
This is even "better" than bringing an ipod to a club and having them plug it in, you just bring your zune in, start your stream and the DJ could link into it. OR you could go to your house, have your computer plugged into a nice sound system, and have it plug into what your zune is playing, this would allow you to use the zune as sort of a music remote control were you have a nice interface in your hand.
Or it could be used the other way around, the computer could transmit music and the zune could log in and see the music being transmitted... Microsoft even has Media center edition which would be perfect for this kind of thing, or it could be a plug in to their current media player. This way people could come over, log their zunes into your computer network and listen to music rocking down the line.
Maybe internet radio, walk into a wifi cafe, set up your zune, and listen to radio streaming from a remote radio station that is on-line, NPR for example (though you might want to find one to your tastes ofc).
How about wireless synchronization with podcasts? Walk into a wifi area and hit "sync" and have it sync with all the podcasts you are behind on and then tell you which ones you haven't listened to yet.
Maybe they could work with an online video provider similar to youtube and hook up a method to stream user videos to the zune in an easy fashion, something that would nearly be a killer app for anything.
Imagine a youtube branded mediaplayer with wireless access (maybe even work with phone companies for EVDO support) were someone could log into youtube and download youtube videos right to their phone.
I mean, the possibilities are ENDLESS and OBVIOUS. You merely have to think "man what would I love to do with a wireless capable player that can be locked into a major brand and legally buy music for" etc... and it seems Microsoft chose one interesting feature to focus on and implement poorly (squirting) and then made it so that the player broke every compatibility rule that you can think of, and made a SONY mistake were it changes format and requires that you re-purchase to play.
In the end you have to ask yourself "WTF"
and note, all of this is without the criticism of making blood contracts with record companies etc... it is saying "here are the things you made me hope you would provide, then you provided... this"
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Let me preface this by saying that I am actually a fan of Apple and I hope that I am dead wrong on this. But look what they did with the XBox, Web Servers, and Browser. Microsoft always tends to start slow with a crappy product and take heavy losses. Over time, they'll leverage Vista and everything else they can to turn the Zune into a household name. Apple is in a good position at the moment, but all it takes is one mistake.
In my opinion, Sony screwed the pooch with the PS-3 and MS took advantage of it. With the war chest they have, they do not need a better product. They only need to be able to win a war of attrition.
I had every intention of flaming you, but you are right. These sales figures show that it took over a year for iPod to really take off.
an ill wind that blows no good
Microsoft duds - Bob, Windows at Work. Fair enough.
OTOH, Office succeeded more because it was a bundle for less than the cost of WP plus 1-2-3. Oh, and all components looked the same (thanks to being Windows based), and worked more similarly, so learning one meant that learning another had already started. And there were "extras" (Org Chart and so on). Despite how good technically 1-2-3 V3 and WP5.1 were, they were arcane to learn.
As for Zune, well it looks as though Microsoft used Taco's review of the iPod and stopped all thought there. No WiFi - well ours has. Smaller than an Archos - well ours is bigger. Lame - well...
"She's furniture with a pulse"
The Zune hardware is not too bad. Some reviews have actually said it's really pretty good. The problem is that you don't try to take on the market leader with a device that is about as good for the same price. Esp if it's larger, heavier, and has less battery. The biggest "cool factor", the WiFi isn't even remotely useful until there is a critical mass of Zune in the wild. If you want to squirt stuff from your Zune you have to find someone else who has one.
But it's not flying off the shelves. It's NOT EVEN ON some shelves. It will fall off the Amazon top 100 in the next few days. The iPod is 5 or 6 of the Amazon top ten electronics sellers. The #1 at Amazon has firmly been an iPod for weeks. (Zune was #94 last I checked)
And Microsoft has done everything right. They were able to convince the entire non-iPod MP3 player industry to adopt Plays-For-Sure so they could all be put out of Microsofts way at once and they STILL can't outsell Creative's player.
Would you do business with them after they lured you into Plays-For-Sure?
They were carefull to pay off the RIAA through Universal Music for each Zune sold. The RIAA gets their money when you pay at the cash register. That way people can know they are doing the right thing.
Everyone who wants to send a buck to the RIAA by buying a Zune raise your hand!
They did a lot of focus groups and their ads had the right mix of Black, White, Asian, women, men, young, and old in their "Welcome to the Social" ads which feature some kind of music player. Did their ads really inform anybody about the Zune? Why I want one instead of an iPod?
They carefully came up with a misleading "points" scheme to cloud how much a song costs and to force consumers to leave a few cents on the table for each purchase. This is sure to appeal to the average buyer.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.