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Originally Posted by notic timing is everything. the ipod arrived into a market craving for a decent mp3 player. something that would replace the chunky discman or the irrelevant MD format. the zune gets respect for carving its own share in an already competitive marketplace. the way i see it, the company that ties themselves to the best battery maker will win. more features mean very little when battery life is so poor. |
I think there's plenty of parallels betweens Microsoft's Xbox venture and the Zune. As with the Xbox, MS saw that a lucrative, consumer electronics niche had matured and they were ready to use their deep capital reserves to leverage themselves into the market.
With the Xbox brand, there was a lackluster start, but the Xbox360 has apparently been able to partly dislodge Sony's grip on console-gaming - at least for the time being.
The Zune is a different story because, without wildfire acceptance, Microsoft has no revenue model to fuel the fledgling brand. They're not making money off the store, and thanks to Apple's volume discounts and subsequent Zune price matching, they're not making money off the hardware. There's also the fact that the portable music player / music store business model is extremely volitile. Sure, Apple is doing good business, but they're changing-up the game almost annually to keep up with the frantic pace of change that's molding content distribution.
There's not the critical mass nor the long-term fiduciary incentive to keep Zune alive. If Zune continues on past another year, it will be a corporate vanity project and nothing more.