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Microsoft To Exit the Zune Business?
thefickler writes "According to Microsoft's quarterly filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Zune platform experienced a revenue drop of 54 percent, or $100 million. This compares to relatively healthy sales of the iPod, which were up 3 percent in the same period (though revenue did drop by 16 percent). Obviously, with the recent job cuts at Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, pundits are wondering how soon until the Zune also gets the chop. As one pundit wrote: 'Microsoft, by now, should be realizing that it's never going to be as "cool" as Apple, so why waste its time with the Zune where it has no competitive advantage?'"
It's fairly easy to see why the Zune failed.
1. A mammoth uphill struggle to beat the popular and well-established iPod (as well as many other competitors)
2. The use of DRM.
3. The use of the word "squirt." Which is easily associated with bodily functions.
4. It came in brown. Which made "squirt" all the more obnoxious.
5. The lock-up issue.
No-one will miss it...
(c) no way to put your own firmware on.
The other points may be valid, but- much as I hate to say it- this is irrelevant for 99.9% of the mass market I assume MS were going for.
If they'd made it possible to reflash, a zillion Linux weenies would have bought the devices just to put Rockbox on them.
No, they probably wouldn't have because it's an MS product.
And the hacker/modder/enthusiast market always overestimates its own importance anyway. Sorry to say this, but you're a relatively tiny percentage. Even if it had been massively successful in that small niche it would still have flopped relative to the mass market iPod.
Nothing wrong with spotting a niche and successfully filling it, of course. However, if your motives- and marketing budget- aim for success with the great unwashed hordes, then niche success is still a flop.
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Windows got the market by price, not by opening up new frontiers.. They copied a lot of stuff from the Mac.. Just iimplemented it on a platform that became affordable to more users than the Apple hardware/software.
Then their 'hammering away' wasn't actually technical; they employed marketing campaigns, misinformation, and even error messages in their products to scare people away from competition (c.f. the old messages in windows 3 when you ran it on a competing DOS)..
MS doesn't (historically) play the 'competition' game.. It plays scorched earth tactics. Find a market it wants to play in.. Throw endless money at it, pushing products out for less than a commercial competitor in only that market can afford (c.f. IE vs Netscape, and other similar events in other markets). Wait until said competitor is dead, then lock it in, and perhaps charge more for the product afterwards, or let it stagnate and put no further development in, killing the development of a whole market.
In the iPod battle, it's Apple, not Microsoft, which pushes to new areas (all the functionality of the iPod touch, the ease of use, so on, so forth).. MS had the almost killer app in there with their wireless sharing, but with its limitations, nobody would have been that enthused about it..
So, MS did their usual "throw money at it, and see what sticks", Apple did design work, and targetted their resources and worked out what people would want to see..
There's a point at which you decide to cut your losses and run. MS have been trounced solidly on all fronts on this one. Now that MS seem to actually have to worry about money (wonder how much they lost in the market crashes), seems this loss maker that isn't going anywhere soon would be a good cut, rather than other areas that actually make a profit.
Wars are won (or at least not completely lost) by not fighting on too many fronts, especially ones where you're getting solidly thrashed by overwhelming opposition. Sometimes a ceasefire, or strategic withdrawl can save the whole show, rather than throwing everything you have in every direction.
It was doomed from the start and here is why. Most MS products do not stand on their own. They are either riding on someone's coattails initially or shoved down people's throats (e.g. DOS and office and explorer). This is usually through corporate sales which a bribeable. Zune had to stand on it's own but had no legs.
No, don't use the "Zune" bit at all, it is tainted. Just do some minor cosmetic adjustments, call it Player 7, and re-release the same thing.
And about the Zune having DRM (is what I heard), I don't really understand that because it comes with a built-in wireless system so you can share your music with any other nearby Zune. Which seems like the opposite of what DRM is trying to accomplish.
Aren't those shared songs DRM-wrapped, meaning they're exactly what DRM is trying to accomplish? DRM isn't about trying to prevent "sharing", but rather about trying to control what you can do with the music you've bought.
Anyway, I don't think it's really all about the Zune being "uncool". I'm going to go out on a limb and make the following claim: The problem people have with the Zune is not the Zune itself, but rather that it's yet another lame attempt by Microsoft to take over a market that they perceive as a threat. Microsoft (rightly) perceived that the iPod was an indirect threat to their OS as well as their WMA format, and their response was to release an "iPod killer" that failed to understand the MP3-player market to a laughable degree.