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Why Microsoft's Zune is Still Failing
DECS writes "Last winter, RDM detailed why Microsoft's iPod Killer would fail miserably. This year, the site argues, Microsoft will fail again, but for a new set of reasons. It is not obvious that the company has figured this out itself. 'Microsoft doesn't seem to learn from its mistakes in consumer electronics very well. When it does however, it frequently gets the timing wrong. This year, Microsoft appears set to compete against the Apple of 2006. It now offers two flash models, last year's leftover 30 GB unit, and new 80 GB version. The problem is that Apple moved the goalpost dramatically. Apple's new 3G Nano is ultra thin and small, but delivers the same video resolution as Microsoft's boxy flash Zunes at the same price. It also plays games.'"
Lets see, they are selling lots of them, and slowly gaining market penetration. I don't see that as a 'failure'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the Black Friday sales papers, first-gen Zunes are going for $80-100.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It's a flaky piece of shit with no style from a company with a horrid reputation that is up against the biggest phenomenon in the music industry since CDs?
Exhibit A: Cute, functional, the industry standard. Everyone knows what it is. Comes in gift-friendly colors. A status symbol.
Exhibit B: Volvo-esque, crippled, and ignored by accessory manufacturers. No one outside Slashdot and the Black Friday Loss Leader Bin has heard of it. Comes in brown. Also a status symbol (but of an undesirable status).
Don't try to overthink it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Zune (and any like product) will succeed when judged on its own merits, rather being competitor of brand A. But it will never be like that, since Zune *was* positioned as iPod killer from the start.
And yet another thing: I think, psychologically, just like myself, every time you hear of xyz-killer from Microsoft, somehow you end up visualizing Balmer throwing the chair, and then somehow you end up *not* purchasing Zune.
Zune shortcomings aside, just look at RoughlyDrafted's other articles. All pro-Apple. Is it a surprise that this guy claims that the Zune is a failure? Personally, the fact that Microsoft don't even try to compete outside the USA speaks volumes about their confidence at this point.
It is a culture thing that causes Microsoft to fail over and over again in the consumer media/entertainment markets.
Although the Zune failure looks time compared to the Xbox fiasco in some ways the Xbox marketplace disaster has moderated the Zune marketplace failure. The Xbox project is now some six years into its life and the console has wasted some seven billion dollars and is dead in the water. The new Xbox 360 after two years on the market is still dead in both Japan and Europe and selling to a fairly niche hardcore US fps/pc gamer demographic. After all those billions the 360 is on track to just making the same 24 million or so worldwide installed base numbers as the first Xbox mess.
The Zune was supposed to be subsidized by the 360 'profits' LOL
Instead of sitting down and hiring really good industrial and UI experts and coming up with something comparable to the iPod line Microsoft has been unable to get out of their same old product strategies:
* Using other products to subsidize new ones to force their products out into the marketplace
* Stupid viral marketing tactics
* Buying off media
* Hiring people to sit around on messageboards hyping their products and slamming their competitors
* Inane attempts at coming up with 'fastest ever' or other silly PR claims
It's a culture thing. People from Microsoft would rather slash your tires or tie your shoe laces together than legitimately win a race and then sit around high fiving each other afterwards over drinks at the local Rendmond wateringhole. Someone up in Redmond needs to wake up and realize that culture is getting them nowhere in the console and digital media markets.
That may have more to do with the diversification of Apple's product line than anything. They have the iPod touch, iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, the iPhone, etc. Microsoft may sell more of one particular model, but I'm gonna take a wild guess that Apple is still moving a lot more iPods. Out of the top 5 slots, Apple has the next 4. Out of the top 20 media players, 13 are made by Apple.
As for whether the Zune is a failure or not, it's all relative. If the Zune had been made by a small startup, it would be hailed as a potential iPod killer. But it's made by Microsoft, the 500-pound gorilla of the digital world, a company with a lot of bright people and billions of dollars at their disposal. When one of the world's most successful corporations enters a market with all those resources behind them, anything less than runaway success is going to be seen as something of a failure. Even if they do manage to grab a large chunk of the market, the question really becomes, how much money are they spending to do it, and how much profit are they making on each Zune?
You are exactly what he was talking about. Thanks for being such a stereotype.
All "golden ear" discussions aside... In case you've been living under a rock, Apple has an 160GB player. The only PMPs with more storage use 2.5" notebook drives and are about four times as large as an iPod. iPods have supported lossless audio for years, which is uncommon among popular media players.
If you happen to like another player that's fine - but don't spout BS. As a wise man once said, it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool that to open it and remove all doubt.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Respectfully I disagree. The iTunes music store was presented over two years after the iPod was released. ITunes is a result of dominant hardware not a cause of it. Apple used its market share in hardware to strong arm the labels into cooperating and up until recently (read: Amazon music store etc.) they've been able to continue their strong arm tactics because of the hardwares success. The iPod sold well before iTunes, and could easily survive if the itms ceased to exist. How you ask? The iPod would continue to thrive as long as Apple produces desirable hardware. Someone seems to think that the ipod is a good product given the tens of millions or so they will sell this quarter and most of the buys will not purchase much music from itms at all but rip their existing library to it.
load "$",8,1
MS is about as nimble as a beached whale carcass. I'm impressed that they're only a year behind.
MS has a long record of not caring what users want, instead assuming that the public will gleefully accept whatever MS produces. They think they can win at consumer electronics by playing like the monopoly in a market they just entered and have no chance to control, even if they played smart by carving a niche for themselves instead of assuming the market will shift according to their will simply because they enter it.
Possibly related to the fact that the Zune isn't launched in the UK yet. You reckon?
From the article: Microsoft was rumored to deliver a product that, true to its roots, ignored usability and instead tacked on impractical features such as wireless sharing.
Wireless sharing is a great idea, but Microsoft's implementation was so neutered and locked-down it ended up being a non-factor.
"There's a thousand and one makers of x86 clones, but only one that has the apple branding, reputation and the capability to legally run OSX."
...design of hardware, support of the OS and hardware under one roof, and a place to go and learn (ProCare) and get your problems looked at for free (Genius Bar). The small price difference (it is small, not to beat an already dead horse) is worth it IMO.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I have a new PC with Vista on it and the Microsoft Media Player that came with it "skips" when playing MP3's. If they can't get their bread-and-butter products working correctly how is anyone to trust their competence at getting a stand-alone product right.
Just look at the graph, and that was with the xbox 360 pretty much having the market to itself. I know the perceived wisdom is that the PS3 is a failure, but it doesn't seem that way if you look at the numbers...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
What you say has a lot of truth behind it. Unfortunately, Microsoft can see the writing on the wall for their current software products. Their OS market share has reached saturation, attempts to persuade people to dump their current Windows for the flashy new one are becoming less and less successful. The end of the road for their office products is similarly in view. The trick of adding new bells and whistles and forcing upgrades with a format change has been used once too many times.
They are desperately looking around to diversify, to enter new markets with new products to build up new revenue streams before the Windows/Office cow dies.
They have tried to break into so many different product areas and markets that its almost funny. None of the attempts have been a great success.
They tried to change the rules of the game and make customers subscribe to software if they couldn't re-sell the same thing with new bells and whistles. That pissed off customers to the point where they bit the bullet and started looking at the alternatives, and what a move to Linix might really entail.
They tried to become the owner of the gateway to multi-media distribution. They went as far as building a whole new OS to support this attempt, and bludgeoned a lot of hardware manufacturers into producing HW to support it. They actually sold the idea to a few media creators, and those that bit are finding that the only thing they really bought was yet another way to alienate their own customers.
Consumer hardware is just another branch they are trying. Unfortunately, like Sony they are letting their various product branches force requirements on others. It makes for a nice consistent story, and the different different branches reinforce each other -- but at the price of producing products that consumers just don't want because of the broken aspects in there simply to support restrictions that some other branch of the company wants to see.
Microsoft should by Sony. Their two brain-dead executive managements seem to have a lot in common.
"I think you need to RTFA! The author of the article has done a good job of dissecting microsoft's marketing claims and the number of NDP and pointing to the creative marketing that Microsoft uses to look like it's been more successful than it is."
I'd better back up here. I'm in the industry. I'm not just pulling things out of my nose. I'm an NPD subscriber (it's invaluable in my profession) and I happen to be friends with the folks who do the marketing for the Creative, Apple and Sandisk players. All of my PCs and audio players are made by Apple. Given that, you might expect me to be anti-Microsoft. It's very tempting to underplay Microsoft's success here, but the facts speak for themselves.
The "channel stuffing" argument was first brought up when Microsoft first reported NPD numbers. Two problems here: NPD is sell-through, not sell-in; and secondly, the Zunes have managed to stay in the top ten. NPD's reporting has its weaknesses (and folks in the industries covered by NPD know how to adjust for these weaknesses), but even making these adjustments, Microsoft has been putting in some solid sell-through numbers.
The Roughly Drafted fellow has taken the approach of picking a thesis ("The Zune is a failure!") and trying to make the facts work with the theory. It's lots of conjecture, and his bias is obvious. Bias is fine (he's not trying to make his pro-Apple stance a secret), but the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies. He's managed to convince a lot of people, but people like me aren't his intended audience.
"If you sell products at a loss for several years it is by definition a failure. Companies are in business to make money."
Eek! Countless products in the CE and PC peripherals industry have been launched with plans that included profitability beyond the first year of sales. I'ts very much par for the course. You can bet that the iPod was sold at a loss for the first six months, and if it managed to make a profit after 12 months, it was pretty lean. It's a good thing that your statement isn't true, or there'd be a lot more "failures" out there than there are now.
"Long term plans are fine and all, but you need to make money at some point and if you look closely at the data instead of blindly believing Microsoft's marketing literature you'll see that they probably won't turn a profit any time in the next decade in these divisions."
Oh, it's no secret that Microsoft isn't expecting to turn a profit on Zune sales for a while. Your "next decade" statement is actually surprisingly close to what some people at Microsoft have told me.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Maybe you should get off your self-important nonsensemobile and cough up the $30 and ten minutes of your time it takes to do your own battery replacement. Maybe Apple knows that the people that care about these things can handle it on their own and the people that drive the market (who ARE going to replace it after 3 or 4 years) can have a more attractive product.
Hundreds of dollars "extra expense" and weeks without use, my ass.
The sad part is that people still view apple as the *underdog*. In all reality, their position in the MP3 player market is no different than MS's in the OS market, except they're far more abusive, proprietary, and monopolistic.
...
... and their car jacks etc to be opened and licensed to other players. I don't want an "ipod" jack in my car, I want a universal mp3 player jack.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
When Apple are successfully sentenced from an anti-trust trial or some other monopoly-based charge, your case will be made. Until then it's just an opinion. I see this opinion a lot, but for some reason it doesn't take into account the massive number of non-Apple mp3 players (look at Asia and you'll see there's no Apple monopoly there), the huge ongoing sales of CDs and the fact that Apple have never done anything to stop any other company entering the market. Abuse has to be shown somewhere, but Apple have simply done their own thing from the start, and neither aided nor hindered competitors. In contrast, Microsoft were charged with offences relating to abusing their monopoly power to force competitors out of the market.
In the online music space, Apple are definitely not an underdog, but they're not the overbearing tyrant you try to paint them as either.
Let me know when they've opened up itunes to download music from any vendor I choose,
Well, if the vendor doesn't use DRM you're good to go right now (and have been since day 1). Apple have said all along they want to drop DRM (there's a Rolling Stone article dated at the debut of the iTMS with the quotes from Steve Jobs, in addition to Jobs' open letter earlier this year) and they've used their position to apply some pressure on the labels who have insisted on it. It's not been a complete success by any means, but the industry is slowly turning away from DRM.
Do you mean a 3.5mm stereo plug/socket? That's the only universal mp3 player jack I've ever heard of (works with portable CD or cassette players too).
Besides, why should a car that will last for (say) 10-20 years have somewhere for a transient piece of technology to sit? Will you still be using the same player in 20 years? Better to get all car stereos to include a generic 3.5mm socket that you can plug any piece of technology into. It'll be far more future-proof than an iPod socket.
Well, OK, maybe apple sort of dominates the ipod market .. big deal.
.. it DOES NOT affect things like access to government documents and services, access to internet content, access to electronic lodgement of tax returns.
.. but we do cast serious ire on the MS monopoly, not because we are fanbois of the alternatives, but because the abusive MS monopoly is a dangerous thing that drags down on so many aspects of our modern society.
MP3 players are NOT a critical component of the infrastructure of modern society. No matter how successful Apple is in dominating the ipod market
Your tax dollars are not voraciously consumed by Apple license fees because politicians promise "An MP3 player for every school child !!".
Apple does NOT receive licensing income from the sale of competing non-apple-ipod MP3 players, just in case those non-apple units are used to 'pirate' ipod toons.
Job adverts do not require submissions in "Apple iPod format", nor do the majority of jobs available today "require" experience with stated versions of licensed Apple ipod releases.
Worst of all - the world is NOT full of semi incompetent "professionals" working towards building critical multi-million dollar infrastructures for the future, who are incompetant because their only exposure to how things fit together is from what they learned on their ipod.
Its really not the same thing. There are plenty of benign and inneffectual monopolies around
Monopolies on - food, water, electricity, oil, computers, transport, comunications, weapons, healthcare, legal services, education, etc can be potentially disastrous.
Monopolies on portable music players though ? Thats about as bad as a monopoly on ice cream. Lucrative maybe, but its not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. You are not exactly cut off from society if you refuse to buy into Apple's iPod dominance.
iTunes doesn't work with anything other than an iPod... but Windows Media Player will work with ANY device (except an iPod, of course, because Apple decided to cripple it in order to maintain their monopoly). Or I can use WinAmp. Or some other player, so long as it's not from the Apple monopoly.
Microsoft: because it's all about choice. Freedom, and choice. Ahhhh, you're blind. Microsoft is just as much after lock-in as Apple. Forget the past and present anti-trust problems that plague Microsoft... They support a multitude of devices not "because [Microsoft]s all about choice" (to quote you), but rather, they do it because their business model is just different than Apple's. Microsoft decided early on that it'd be better to let dozens of manufacturers fight over the music hardware market, and dozens of online retailers/labels fight over the music sales pie while controlling both markets from behind the scene. It was a good plan, but Apple destroyed it by sucking up nearly all of the market with a non-Microsoft system.
Instead of competing with retailers and manufacturers, Microsoft morphed Windows Media into a framework for them to license and use. You see, all the retailers would need a DRM scheme to effectively sell their music. This would then force all the device makers to choose some DRMs to support and effectively segment the market (market = money). DRM systems are complex to implement and require trust by both consumers and labels. With Windows being ubiquitous on Desktops worldwide, MS was positioned from the start to CONTROL the music/video market through Windows [Media Framework]. WMP supports WMA/V DRM, and since its present on 95% of computers in the world, device makers and retailers almost have to use it to hope to compete with the iTunes lock in.
Microsoft charges device manufacturers and retailers a licensing fee for each and every unit of WMA/V enabled product they ship. The rates are negotiated for each company of course, but are likely higher than the "suggested" sample rates on the Microsoft website. Using the sample rate, a company that offered 2 WMA enabled portable music players could pay $1,600,000 to Microsoft in fee's each year. On top of that, your device has to be "approved" by MS. This means it can't use open source software (even open source decoders or operating systems) and basically makes you pay to be Microsoft's bitch.
Now, after reading the preceding, do you still believe Microsoft is all about choice?? Perhaps you've drank too much corporate cool-aid? Microsoft designed their model around lock in too... it's just more subtle than Apple's model... and it's not even close to as profitable, hence the Zune! MS has now gone into the hardware space itself (a strange move for them considering how they've handled cell phones/Windows Mobile) in an attempt to get closer to an Apple-style lock-in model.
References:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/agreements.aspx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/0/1/d01ec2b5-a42f-4cef-ae27-123c02515fc7/WMDRM10_FinalProduct_v3-20-2006_Sample.pdf
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/zune-on-linux-done-kinda-219657.php
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Because that so-called 'rag tag band of volunteer programmers' is largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, RedHat etc.
Hey, this particular problem was their own fault. They allowed an already fixed bug ("the bug was fixed on more recent Vista builds than the one they were using for the demo") to affect a public demonstration of a new feature; they deserve to take all the flak they got for it.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Because that so-called 'rag tag band of volunteer programmers' is largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, RedHat etc.
No, it isn't "largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, or RedHat". Each of those companies contributes some work to key projects.
The enormous imbalance in resources for development and marketing between Microsoft and Linux remains, and hence, when two products by each group grow a the same rate, it's a failure for Microsoft and a success for Linux.
The only difference between Apple's iPod "monopoly" and the Microsoft OS real monopoly is that people actually CHOOSE to buy the Apple variant. People WANT an iPod because they work well. Nobody ever talks about wanting XP because of how great it is. The fact the third party market makes more iPod jacks than "universal" ones isn't Apple's fault, either. The third party is just responding to demand. Good luck with your proprietary Zune USB cable, by the way.
Ok, not really, but people are sticking with XP because it (mostly) works. This is a shame, because Microsoft should be held to higher standards than the Fischer-Price OS known as XP. Instead, they throw a REALLY bad OS out there, and suddenly everyone forgets what they hate about XP already. Actually, that's kind of smart on Microsoft's behalf, come to think of it -- release something SO bad that people forget how bad the previous version was.