Microsoft's Zune crashes as iPod sales grow - Page 2

Maybe, you should buy a new iPod?? Apparently that's the source of your confusion regarding iPod innovation- you're using a 2001 iPod and expecting it to "innovate" all by itself.

Because the UI for iPods was just changed completely in the past 4 months.

See? If you buy a new iPod, you can see what Apple's been doing since whenever you bought yours...

Damn, who knew?



lol

great link...i read in disbelief how arrogant and how stupid MS feels its customers are, their dna is wrapped up in that article....that's why they fail, and will continue to fail...this guy is an embarrassment at every opportunity MS screws its customers so why even use them...that's what's happening now, enterprise is looking and their fortunes will follow. those that have a choice avoid MS

So if the iPod is so popular, why doesn't Apple just stop updating them and let's see how much sales they continue to have.

I doubt their sales would even improve if they opened up to macs or linux, I don't eve think many people using Macs would even go for Zunes.

Steve Ballmer was heard to remark "I'll have the roast crow with the mango salsa."

By "core competencies" you can only mean blocking distribution channels for products where they hold a monopoly share.

As has been seen time and time again. If Microsoft can't stop people from buying another company's products people tend not to buy Microsoft. Except for WordPerfect of course as Corel has really mucked that up.

"Ballmer to pull them out of their funk."

Ballmer? He isn't a leader. He's currently the anchor around Microsoft's neck. For those of us not wanting Microsoft to turn things around, the best way for them to keep mucking things up to keep him involved as much as possible.

Layoff the entire Zune division and Microsoft is well on its way to that 5,000 cut it said it was going to make.

Of course, if they do that, there will be a brief dip in unemployment as I hire a bunch of people to throw the biggest schadenfreude party to date. The biggest one in history will be when Microsoft throws in the towel in the OS Wars with Ballmer handing over his sword at Cupertino!

I disagree that the iPod isn't still innovative. Sure, the Classic, Nano, and Shuffle are similar to other offerings (thanks to copying of the market leader). However, the iPod Touch is amazing. With the iPod Touch, I don't have a need to drag my laptop along with me a lot of the time. I can surf the Internet, check my email, and the list goes on.

You could even use something like Pandora to listen to the music you like. If you use Pandora on your iPhone it will give you an iTunes Store link to the song under the album art cover. Oh...for to mention that Pandora is FREE!

I am not sure why you are astonished. The first generation Zune really was a disaster. If it is still up, you can to Microsoft's Zune Blog and first generation users would really rag on it. The software was buggy, and Microsoft didn't come up with significant software updates until the second generation Zunes shipped. I played with a friend's once. The player seemed well constructed. It, however, was supposed to have more features then the iPod. First, the advertised squirting feature seemingly half of the time didn't work because Microsoft allowed content right holders to choose whether the songs could be squirted or not. Interestingly enough iTunes "squirts" songs to WiFI connected computers. If you live in a school dorm, it is a great way to learn about new music and to see what other people are listening to.

Second, unlike with the iPod, you could not use the Zune as a hard drive, an alarm clock, a stop watch, a address book, or to watch videos or photos on the television.

Who was going to give the second generation a chance after such a lame handling of the first generation? Further, when you consider Apple has like a gazillion accessories for the iPod, it makes it hard to take a chance on a third party player.

If you live in a dorm or apartment complex, iTunes is really a great way to listen to what other people are listening to. It used to be you could copy other people songs off their computer using iTunes. Apple shut that down, but you can still listen to music that way.

Name them Daniel... what are these mystery devices with "More games, better ui, and smaller sleeker devices" you talk of....?

If you are unable to recognize the innovation that exudes from the ipod touch, I would have to question if you understand the meaning of the word.

What you say is true. My astonishment resulted from a different point of view though. If they have been able to sell roughly two million players in 2006/2007, while the reviews were mostly negative and clearly rated it worse than the comparable iPods, it astonished me, that they were loosing market share in 2008 when reviews were almost unanimously positive - some even stated the the newest Zune software outperforms Apple's in some areas... (or, sarcastically, do the MS buyers loose interest, once a product becomes good - Pavlovian conditioning - masochism?).

Nobody can take a significant piece of the cake away from Apple, unless they become sloppy or overdo it on the pricing - so far they have only made the products better and prices went down. You have iPod connectivity in most cars, quite a few hotels and now even some planes. A competitor would have to release a much better product for a much lower price (not really possible, as almost nobody could buy the required volume of Flash memory to match production cost) and build up an competitive infrastructure at the same time, and would still have problems to get anywhere close. Not quite possible. I will never understand what made MS even start this...

This is a great comparison!

Even without the whole MPPC thing, it still works.

Microsoft is to "innovation" as Edison is to "invention." Ha!

The rental vs. purchase discussion is a non-discussion once you realize that a majority of people don't keep listening to new stuff. They listen to the same music over and over again. That is the normal music listening pattern.

The only people who keep listening to new music are people who really love music and spend a lot of time on it. This is a real minority.

Thats really funny

Do you seriously think there's much incentive for Microsoft to release a Mac client for the Zune? Yes, there's a user here who wishes there was such a thing, but I really don't think many Macintosh users would be interested in a Microsoft device, even if it does offer some functionality missing in the iPod (such as the subscription service). It would also require Microsoft to port their DRM library.


I don't think Microsoft needs to catch up to the iPod in order to consider the Zune a successful product. I think their interested in creating an entire home media experience with the XBOX 360 as a media extender, the Zune as a portable media extender, and at the heart, expanding their virtual operating system monopoly to entrench Windows Media Center as the media server. Without a portable device, they have no chance against iTunes. If Apple only did a better job of advertising the Apple TV as a media extender, I think it'd be endgame.

The saddest thing about the possible demise of the Zune though, is that it *is* rather innovative in many ways.

I know I'm not going to get any friends on this list by saying it, but the Zune and the Zune marketplace and the deals that MS had around it were (or still are) the most innovative thing the Microslut has done for years and years.

The device itself is a bit solid, but well designed for a 1st generation MS effort, the software is some of the nicest looking they have ever made even if it has some usability problems. The "social" is a great idea that only fails because of their ridiculously low market share. If Apple had done "the Social" it would have been the biggest thing since sliced bread. One thing Apple fails miserably at is social type applications and catering to the social needs of it's customers.

So in dire economic times (like now), Microsoft is likely to cut off Zune and throw it away to "concentrate on it's (boring) core competencies" as they say.

The great irony here is that those guys behind the Zune effort are some of the best people, with the best ideas they have. Microsoft now is in the position of maybe having to cut away these innovative, creative types to focus on the drones that check for errors in Excel code? Horrors!

Please explain why a Mac user would want to use a Microsoft device. Not only that, the reality is that Mac users are a minority. Adding a Mac client would expand their market by 10%. A Linux client would expand their market by 1%. Those are serious diminishing returns, if the Windows user market can't sustain the Zune, then Mac and Linux users won't either. Porting apps take a lot more than 10% more work, so the additional customers would cost more to support than their Windows user base.



All those other points aside, for this point I would blame the music companies. They've segmented all their download rights to a per-country basis and you have to make negotiations for each country. Apple takes a while to add countries too. The recording companies simply haven't caught up with the new reality.


It looks like maybe you misunderstand, read post #30.

eMusic's selection is fragmentary at best, the bands that I checked were only represented by a few of their albums. I didn't appreciate the fact that credits don't roll over, and you can't buy more music a month than your credits allow, that's incredibly constraining.


I think it's probably a misunderstanding. Usually, Microsoft doesn't have much for marketing money, they've generally spent less on marketing than other companies do. They certainly didn't market Zune as much as Apple did when Apple started selling the iPods. What marketing MS did do was poorly executed.

Frankly, I don't think people understand the math behind it, which is understandable why it fails in the US because Americans are generally bad at math, our typical students would probably get whooped by Europe's special ed students.

If you spent $15 a month buying albums, you'll buy 18 albums a year. Ten years of that means that you own 180 albums, and who knows, maybe you'll decide you don't like some of the older ones you bought, maybe only 15 of them are in your rotation. In comparison, $15 a month of renting gets you access to several hundred thousand albums, all commercial free. But people are fine with spending, $30, 50 75 or more on cable TV for video that is infested with horrible ads, which is also a rental, cancel the cable and the cable goes away. You can record cable for later, but then, it's also possible to record music using the analog ports too, the same analog hole applies to both mediums.

Stop complaining - - I'd rather be in Fiji paying twice as much for an iPod than the -8 (that's a minus) degrees F (that's Fahrenheit) I woke up to this morning.....

LOL, what ever. How much is Micro$oft paying you to go to Apple blogs and defend Zune? You might be the lucky 5,000 employees to receive special gift.

the Zune is actually a better piece of hardware than any ipod you care to mention.

Audio quality is much better, video quality is really good.

The current Zune software is better than iTunes.

its lack of success is down to many factors...... many of which are shared with any competitor to low brow companies like for example McDonalds.

1/ Perception (Apple vs MS)
2/ Timing (entering the market)...remember the whole ipod/itunes idea wasn't Apple's in the 1st place.
3/ Marketing..nuff sed.
4/ Ecosystem


innovation:

can you wirelessly sync with an Ipod?

ripoff?:

the margins on ipods are in the 50% range..whos ripping who off.?

I'm disappointed that the Zune still hasn't been made available outside of North America.

I've been buying exclusively iPods since the 3rd gen model hit the shelves but competition is always a good thing for the consumer.

There's actually some features on the Zune platform that I'd love to see on the iPod. My top two would be a larger screen on the HDD models and something akin to the Zune pass subscription service. $15 for 10 tracks to keep forever and unlimited rentals from the rest of the store is great value.

So what are the margins on the zune? after all, the 120gb of each are the same price.

If the margins are different, then apple is simply more efficient. their product is still priced competitively; should they duck the price just out of charity? should we have a federal agency regulate how much margin a company can make on a product?

it's not a rip off if it's competitively priced.

Remember right before the first Zunes came out, and Apple lowered the price of the hard-drive based iPods $50? Microsoft had to price the Zune to match (they had announced a higher price to match the old iPod price). That really screwed up Microsoft's financial model, so that they will never recoup their R&D costs (I'm sure they wouldn't have anyway).

Also remember that each Zune model copied the iPod design of the year before (while adding 'squirting' and a couple of other software functions), while at the same time Apple came out with new improved models.

I actually see the point of curtwilliams about the subscription model - you get 10 songs a month to keep for $15 (keep permanently), plus you can download anything in the store to use or preview (of course it won't be permanent, but you can buy it if you like it).

I get frustrated by iTunes' 30 second previews - it's just too short. Some songs play only a talking intro for the preview, some play parts where you can't tell what the song is like. I've bought songs that I thought I liked, but when I heard the entire songs there were parts in there that really annoyed me, and I deleted them.

Still, I wouldn't go for the subscription model myself, but it makes sense as a tool, especially like curtwilliams pointed out - suppose you have a party where you want to play 3 hours of yodeling songs - you don't have to buy them.

"innovative" is relative to the competition, not itself.
Compared to the nano2, touch, and iPhone, the rest of the field is still far behind, execpt in particular niche features (e.g. for the tiny % using something like ogg format.)

For those who say Apple should join the race to the bottom with 'phone-only' "iPhone nano", keep this in mind... Apple is thriving on the flight to quality.

The funny thing is, I know a LOT of REALLY creative people at MS... some of the best in the world.
So the disaster we're seeing falls completely at the feet of upper management, who still see the world as their cash-cow to be milked via their (shrinking) monopoly.
Sad for my friends in the belly of the beast.

That's what 'radio' is for. Far better than randomly clicking in a store's sale list.
Find stations in the iTunes radio section and find DJ with taste you appreciate.
That's how its work for the past 50 years... good model.

You've got to be kidding. What do you think the iPod Touch is?

so why is there no traditional radio in the ipod?

R. I. P. Zune.



(rest in poo!!!!1!!1!11!!!)


(nods to wilco)

well I would argue that Zune's are better made from better quality components.

To me..it feels more expensive.

Apple can leverage their marketshare with suppliers for pricing....right or wrong...... do Apple still get kids to assemble them??

http://www.wired.com/science/discove.../2006/06/71176


No other tech company gets the sort of margin Apple gets..or even approaches in the tech industry.

and the really ironic thing is that its' biggest fanboys love the fleecing they regularly get.!!!

amazing..

...

Um, there is. It costs like 50 bucks. You are constrained to your local radio stations, but there is radio.

iPod Radio player

This kinda sucks. While it was probably inevitable, I think microsoft was really the only company who had both the resources and the desire to create a viable competitor to the iPod and iTunes combo. As much as a like these two products, I really think there could be more innovation with the iTunes store/jukebox. Right now, its basically functional, but it really could do a lot more and simultaneously be a lot sleeker.

My only hope is that the move to DRM free music really allows apple to do a lot more with iTunes, as I think DRM crippled a lot of what they potentially might have done.

Man, just give it up.

You are a hopeless troll and most of what you are pushing here is total BS.

You've gone on for several posts now about how Zunes are built better and with higher quality components, but when pressed, it turns out this is just your "feeling."

The reality is, Apple products have a better build quality and a lower return rate, and a higher customer satisfaction rating than anything Microsoft has ever done, period.

You reference the child labour accusation, without referencing the fact that it turned out to be nothing. Again, the reality here is that Apple has higher standards in this area than anyone and requires their manufacturers to adhere to a code of conduct that is exemplary.

I could go on knocking down each of the points you make in each post, but it's a waste of time because you are just a troll after all. The only thing you've said that's actually true, is that Apple has larger margins (by a lot) than most everyone else in the industry.

Just give it up and go cuddle your Zune or something.
It's probably feeling down on this news today and could use a hug.

Microsoft Zune Crashes - "Zune platform revenue decreased $100 million or 54% reflecting a decrease in device sales."

So that explains the 5000 job cut at MS!

"The music player's sharp decline in revenues helped erase 60% of the company's earnings in its Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes the Xbox gaming platform."

How many more MS employees to get their walking papers from Ballmer?

Care to provide some factual evidence to back up your argument, or are you just claiming your opinion to be fact.


A companies profit margins have absolutely ZERO to do with a customers perceived value in a product. People buy iPods because the perceived benefit outweighs the costs. Otherwise, they would buy something else, like maybe one of your precious Zune's.


So, your argument is based on the fact that, to you.. it feels. Great argument. To me..Zune's feel cheap. Guess they must be made from cheap components then right?


Again, any factual evidence to back this up, or is it just your "opinion" again.


No, what is amazing is the same old tired, first grade argument you trolls bring out any time anyone has anything pro-Apple or con-Apple-Competitor to say.

But not too hard of a hug or it might "squirt" on you!

Thoroughly agree, Apple do not understand 'social' whatsoever. Probably due to the fact that they ban their employees from using social apps to increase productivity. Least thats what I read somewhere.