Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172630/ Zune has occupied the top spot for quite some time. Is this a failure?
Uhh, the 30 and 80gb Zunes are hdd-based, not flash and compete with the "classic" ipods not the nano. But yeah, that IS Apple 2006, so the article is sort of right. sort of.
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?
We need to have a law or something, that declares everything made by apple as THE only way of doing things, and also forbid other companies from making similar products. I mean, why do they even try? Apple is by far the best and when someone else tries, they're actually wasting valuable resources (plastic, electricity, and even silicon!).
So, Microsoft, and everyone else: please, stop trying. Apple has the only music player worth anything. You have no chance.
(If you don't see the sarcasm tags, then you're probably on a Mac)
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.
Moved them and made them smaller. Try getting a chair between them now.
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.
I noticed the graph half way down the page which says that most people would buy the iPhone a gift. Great gift.
... and here's the contract"
"Happy Christmas, here's an iPhone
-1 not first post
I think it is axiomatic that if your buyer/user and customer are not the same person, then you are in trouble. In Microsoft's case, without hardware sales there will be no advertisements or add sales either, and since they're selling the zunes at a loss, they lose on all counts.
It worked for web browsers and maybe mouses - but their efforts to penetrate the consumer electronics market in any meaningful way have so far failed to gain any traction.
They've got lots of cash, so they can "compete" while they're losing money and do it for years. Who knows, Xbox might take over the game console market someday. Maybe Zune will amount to more than a poor copy of last year's product. On the Xbox front, they can buy up game developers and convert their products to Xbox-only products. I don't see that kind of business plan working with music players, though. Even if they negotiate exclusive distribution rights for many important acts - the market will ignore those restrictions as it has already shown itself capable of doing. Which act wants to be the first to release "Zune only" tunes? Let's keep in mind the percentage of the portable music player market that Zune represents.
And they've already burned a lot of bridges - remember "Plays For Sure"? They signed up player manufacturers right and left - then left them high and dry. Their potential customers are more than a little aware of this too - who wants to buy a player that you might not be able to purchase any music for in a year or two?
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.
If it was anybody but Microsoft, maybe. The problem with MSFT positioning itself as an anti-anything is that nobody thinks "I'm a loner. A rebel. And Microsoft is building the product to help me let the world know it."
Anyway, they couldn't done it, IMO. There's a saying attributed to Ford Motor Company that says, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." I used to work at Microsoft, and Microsoft's culture eats everything for breakfast. When they acquired my former employer, the first thing they did was wipe out our culture, and our culture was a lot of what helped us to make a product good enough to make Microsoft want us.
I left after a year and a half and know work for another company that was recently acquired. Our new parent wants to preserve our culture no matter what, so that we keep making the great product that made them want to buy us. What a night and day difference.
You are exactly what he was talking about. Thanks for being such a stereotype.
Joel spotted the real difference between iPod and Zune:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/05.html
No sig today...
...Are you aware Zunes are only sold in the US?
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?
"It Suck-didly-ucks, Flanders"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
There's only one way to beat the iPod, or any dominant figure in a specific market. You have to be twice as good and half as expensive. The Zune looks like it's making real strides. From what I'm reading, it might be a little bit better than the iPod. But it also costs about the same price. That is why the Zune will fail. It just doesn't have the major advantage on BOTH features and price that it takes to overcome the iPod's entrenchment.
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.
I thought it was because the logo, when viewed in a mirror, looks like 'anus'
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It's not cheaper than SanDisk players. It doesn't have more features than Apple. It's not physically distinct; e.g. is waterproof or shockproof. It's a mundane me-too product in a sea of mundane me-too products. It is a failure? I don't know, are any of them?
I was checking what was left in the Encinitas CompUSA store a couple of days before it closed for good. About the only thing left in quantity were UPS's and Zune's. Bear in mind that CompUSA had cut prices by at least 40% to clear out the store (they were even selling the racks that held the merchandise).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Microsoft started out as a software company. They produced a desktop operating system, office productivity software and Server applications to make office life a bit easier. Apple did the same with less success. Now, every time I hear about Microsoft cutting into new markets where they have no business, I can't help but be embarrassed for them.
Microsoft really has no business making things like the Zune and Sync. It's not their core competency to make personal, consumer products. They're just not as good as Apple (in relation to the Zune) or car stereo companies (in relation to the Sync).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's pockets are too deep to take a lesson from failed products. Now I understand why they didn't cut their losses with the Zune months ago and stop pushing it as an iPod killer.
The game.
Yep.
And when you've figured out why they do something so silly you'll have cracked the problem.
No sig today...
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!
Microsoft's marketing campaign:
You can "squirt" your music at your friends and they'll be able to listen to it a maximum of three times before deciding to pay for a legal copy.
Yeah, dude! Can't wait to get me one of those!
No sig today...
At Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, USA, about 70% of headphones are iPod earbuds, and most of the rest are replacements connected to a iPod. I don't think I've seen any other mp3 players, and it sort of makes me scared to get anything else. Although, I think I'll be getting an LG Chocolate and using it as an mp3 player.
And as for public transit, Rutgers has free bus service and everyone complains at the start of the fall semester because of the people who think they can drive to class. They don't realize that there are just too many cars on the road if they do that.
"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.
I picked up a Zune 30 for cheap too. Despite all the flak it has received I really like the device, although the Zune 30 is certainly lacking in the "cool" factor. At a recent Thanksgiving party I was too embarassed to take it out when people around me had iPhones.
You can't really compare prices like that. The Zune 80 competes with the iPod Classic 80 GB; both are $250. The iPod Touch and iPhones cost more, but they're different classes of devices from the Zune 80.
If you're still using the old firmware there's a hack to make it work like a hard drive, but I don't know of a workaround for the new firmware.
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.
If "the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies," why don't you point any out? It's easy to dismissively ignore the facts and stuff words into TFA that don't exist, but if you are an expert, why can't you present anything substantial that was not correct in the article?
Channel stuffing was never brought up about NPD's retail sales because "channel stuffing" is stuffing the channel, not selling through retailers. Stuffing the channel was obvious because Microsoft was "meeting its goals" just in time with huge shipments, but retail sales (such as reported by NPD) weren't reflecting those same shipment volumes. The chart in TFA makes it very clear that Xbox 360s were stuffed dramatically in time to meet goals, not demand.
Stores have been sitting on piles of 360s over the last year. That's why Microsoft dropped its June 2007 cumulative shipment goal from 15 million to 12 M and then only shipped 11.5 M. Since June, new shipments have been very small--the channel is stuffed to the gills! Additionally, Xbox Live subscriptions (which come with new units as a free trial) are only around half the units shipped. Are there that many people who buy a 360 and then don't use the free Live membership? Or are those unused subscriptions just sitting in unopened boxes at retailers?
The number and popularity of games available for the 360 and PS3 also don't reflect the idea that there are only 1/2 the number of PS3 players, despite the year head start Microsoft had. Microsoft also has anemic sales outside of the US with the 360, and isn't even attempting to sell the Zune overseas.
Microsoft can plan on ten year profits, but that didn't work out with WinCE, which has been a flightless bird since 1998 and has been left behind by the rapid ascent of the iPhone in its first few months.
Would all the theorists who think Microsoft should be granted a quiet, uncritical ten year waiting period to see whether their products can survive in the market please take a look at the iPhone? It went from announcement to available product in 6 months, and instantly became the hottest selling mobile. It now has 27% of a contentious market, despite being a luxury, premium priced product competing against simpler and apparently cheaper (when subsidized with more expensive contracts) Windows Mobile phones. It sounds a bit like pundits insisting that President Bush's actions should not be criticized until ten years out, at which time he will somehow look like a competent statesman.
There is no reason to believe that ten years will help the Zune, and no examples of any dinosaur needing ten years to take over a market. Microsoft took the graphical desktop market from Apple between 1990-1995, not by slowly taking Mac sales, but by expanding a larger market outside of Apple in the DOS PC market. It isn't doing anything similar here. Microsoft rapidly took the browser market from Netscape within a couple years 1996-1997.
Microsoft also talked about how PlaysForSure would rapidly take the iPod. It didn't. It started over with an incompatible version of the same technology, starting the clock back at zero while also competing against existing PlaysForSure devices.
How is it that "3% doesn't even matter" Apple rapidly earned a significant share in smartphones (27% in the US in its first quarter) on its first try, while monopolist Microsoft can't be expected to take more than a shred of a very specific market for "MP3 players using a hard drive"? Also note that if you reserve the right to define your own market, Apple has 100% worldwide market share for "mobile phones with more than 2GB of RAM."
iPhone Grabs 27% of US Smartphone Market
Thanks for being such a stereotype.
Thanks for being such a tool. Microsoft has lobbyists, the BSA, thousands of programmers, a bushel of Ph.D's, an Office monopoly, and an OS monopoly. Just why, exactly, should a rag tag band of volunteer programmers be judged by the same standards as a company with more money than god?
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.
first, you're an idiot. If you google for "ipod battery replacement" you'll quickly find a site offering them for sale. On the site they show a video of someone using the tools they provide to open up an ipod, disconnect the battery, put in a new one and close it up. All in under 5 minutes. As for the size issue, I have an older 60GB ipod, and I DO wish it was a third of a cm thinner, or smaller. Plus having a sleek design is nice, not to mention that battery covers are just one more thing to loser or break.
Of course, the fact that this can be done is probably beyond your comprehension.
Phil
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.
Nobody ever talks about wanting XP because of how great it is.
Apparently a lot of former Vista users say that XP is great. They wax lyrical around on tech websites about it.
No conclusions. I'm just saying, that's all.
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.
...and hates it. She complains about the interface to the unit itself, hates playlists, as well as the interface to the computer - the Zune software. She despises the fact that the Zune software indexes and imports whatever it finds and that she can't delete media from the Zune outside of the PC-ased Zune software. In her opinion the no-name, cheap-ass, 1g flash-based MP3 player she won in a company raffle vastly outperforms her Zune in every way that matters to her, namely; she can manage it on a filesystem level when she plugs it into her PC, there is no DRM so she can listen to her e-books, and she does't have to learn a new software interface just to use it. As far as she's concerned, it's a drive letter when she plugs it in and everything she puts there, she can listen to when she unplugs it. When the Zune behaves like that, it'll be viable. Until then, it's junk.
Future events such as these may affect you in the future!