Microsoft To Exit the Zune Business? 361
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?'"
this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:A Rockbox port would be awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good example of Microsoft snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Zune had pretty good hardware at a reasonable price ... then they put (a) horrible firmware on it (b) THE WORST PC software imaginable for it (c) no way to put your own firmware on.
If they'd made it possible to reflash, a zillion Linux weenies would have bought the devices just to put Rockbox on them.
But no. Obsessive control is so much more important than actual, uh, sales. Remember, it worked for the music industry! Oh wait, it didn't.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's fairly easy to see why the Zune failed.
I can't even see the Zune succeeding if all iPods suddenly combusted. It was a bad product from day 1.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if it was a factor, but it is deliciously funny, that Microsoft's Zune did not play Microsoft's PlayForSure format. :-)
Re:A Rockbox port would be awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
(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.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for #1, I don't think many of those issues really hit the average consumer except when it was too late - when they already bought it.
In my life, I probably used an iPod for less than 20 minutes and a Zune for less than 15. I like looking at the newer models my friends carry from time to time, and recently had a friend's newer Zune in my hands. It's okay, much better than the sloppy buttons of the 1st gen. What strikes me about the interface - the pad where you can scroll up or down with your thumb - is that it still isn't as easy as the clickwheel on an iPod. It may sound irrelevant, but since this is the one and only way to communicate with the device it does become a big deal.
Otherwise, it's just another Me too! device and with the prices pretty much in the same range as an iPod, there is little incentive to go out and buy one. With an iPod, you at least have iTunes and the like.
Re:What? So Microsoft should give up? No way! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Doomed from the start (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about:
6: Not available outside North America (presumably because getting the rights for the marketplace agreed was too hard), which then planted the meme that it could only take purchased tracks, rather than "rip your own CD".
7: Marketplace tracks were priced in "points" rather than real money, which meant that the customer needed to pre-load the points ("What, I need to pay for my music in advance! Why can't I just pay when I want it?").
Now, while both of those are incorrect (it could take MP3, and the loading of points could be done at purchase), it gave out the wrong perceptions. And in this game, perception is all.
Re:A Rockbox port would be awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
No product aimed at the zillion Linux weenies is ever going to be commercially successful. The reason is that there aren't a zillion Linux weenies. There probably aren't even 100,000 Linux weenies that would buy an MP3 player just so they could reflash it.
Re:What? So Microsoft should give up? No way! (Score:3, Insightful)
PCs for the most part aren't about fashion. PCs, for the most part, are for businesses and should be boring and un-distracting (and part of the problem with Vista is they forgot this, and blinged it out at the expense of hardware).
As well as administering Linux and BSD systems, I also admin a couple of Win2K3 servers. I sort of like Win2K3, because it's crushingly boring and just gets the job done. Once I've set up the scripting environment how I like it, I hardly notice it's there. That's how a business OS should be. Windows should be dull, and prior to Vista it was dull and that's why businesses liked it - stick XP on your AD domain, and begone Teletubbies theme. It should fade into the background. It should not be giving me an "experience" (how I hate that word when applied to an OS). At most, 3D and transparency effects should be subtle and a visual cue to the eye, not yelling "HEY LOOK AT ME, I DO TRANSPARENCY AND 3D EFFECTS!!!111eleventyone", like Vista does. Ironically, the fashion-sensitive Apple people do better in this respect than Windows. Ubuntu does better too in this respect.
But music players are another kettle of fish - for the most part they ARE fashion driven. Release a fashion disaster like the Zune promoted by a sweaty fashion disaster like Ballmer who uses the word "squirt" in relation to it, and you have a failure.
Re:Wrong approach... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a bad product -at- day one, but it's gotten far better since. It has some very impressive features which I haven't seen in any other MP3 player at that price range, and upgrading older versions to support all the features of the newer ones is something I wish more companies would allow. If they'd just open the fucker up and lose the DRM...
The way I think DRM should work is like this: If you try to play a file which you don't have the 'key' for the media player will still play it, only also informing the user that it's playing an unlicensed song somehow. Thus make DRM a tool to help the user stay legit, instead of a punishment for those who are legit but can't playback the file the way they want to.
That way it's the user, and not a potentially faulty algorithm, that have the final say whenever they can play back the music or not.
Directories? (Score:1, Insightful)
For all of you iTunes-haters out there... Stop managing files by hand, learn what a meta-data is, and stop living like you're still using MS-DOS.
Re:Just because (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just because (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was in Middle School, I bought a Muvo TX FM (I think that's its name) for $30 at Wal Mart. A whopping 256MB MP3 player.
But, it has all of those features. Play by folder and not by ID3 tags (though it even supports scrolling Asian character sets for those!), a graphic equalizer, sleep-off timer, FM tuner and microphone...
I've never purchased another one. It's tiny, functions as a USB drive, and I just sync it with my computer before I leave for work (or now school) every morning. Who cares how "cool" it is if only the earbuds leave your pocket?
Re:wheres (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm more surprised that 'andnothingofvaluewaslost' is missing.
Re:Just because (Score:2, Insightful)
Because iTunes works.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply Wrong.
Apple's DRM is a non-issue because once it is setup it is utterly transparent to the user. One account. 5 computers. Unlimited number of ipods connected to those computers. Burn tracks to a CD (10 times in the same playlist)and rip them on another machine and the DRM is gone. And now, the DRM is gone altogether!
The information is everywhere. Why is it so damn hard for people to read and understand why Apple's DRM isn't an issue? The facts speak for themselves.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft uses the point system so you can pay for things over multiple platforms xbox, zune etc.
You know, Cash works for that too.
Re:Just because (Score:2, Insightful)
Works at what?
If you mean to say it works at hogging resources and weaseling its way into all sorts of other processes and applications where it is of dubious (at best) use, then sure, but if you mean to imply it's a better music player than just about any other option you're full of it.
As far as I'm concerned, the two single biggest drawbacks to iPods are that they cost twice as much and you actually have to install iTunes.
For the record, I still don't see what's so damned hard about making an MP3 player connect to a computer as a flash hard drive. Just let me copy/paste the files through whatever file browser I use, and skip this whole syncing nonsense if I don't want to do it. And for all the people who do (for some reason) find that their media player is the best tool for copying files onto their MP3 player, they can do so with any player they want rather than the one their player's manufacturer wants.
Re:Ever Again (Score:3, Insightful)
This is that critical mass thing again. PlaysForSure was still early enough in the general maturity of the net that it's been kinda washed over.
But to pull that stunt *twice* makes an event that will show up at the more dangerous business-analysis-article level, and that's far harder to get away from. Also, it coincides with a strange emergence of audience maturity awareness not even present 8 years ago.
You used to form opinions about stuff from 3 newspapers and *the local retail store*. Products created their own gestalts. Something shows up new, "it was cool" ... because it showed up on the shelf.
Now we're asking each other about stuff, and *leveraging our own experts* so that the classical media begins to sound lame if they throw too much eggnog into their spinpuff.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
The pmp manufacturers don't give a crap about drm but have to include it if they want to have a music downloading service because the record/movie companies demand it.
As recent iTunes and Amazon store news show they really don't, or are not in a position to. Microsoft failed at defining their customers: they collaborated with the content industry against the people who were supposed to buy the Zune. Apple got it right, whether that will be good or bad in the long run.
Re:this comes as no surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool? (Score:2, Insightful)
You can be "cool" simply by buying a shiny toy with an Apple logo? I guess "cool" isn't what it used to be.
Re:Cool? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can be "cool" simply by buying a shiny toy with an Apple logo? I guess "cool" isn't what it used to be.
Being cool is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with what you own. You are cool if you are happy with who you are and don't care about what other people think of you. An iPod will not help you achieve that. At the same time, buying something other than an iPod in an attempt to be "different" than the masses will just make you look like a zealot or anti-apple fanboy.
Re:Hardly Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a brown zune you insensitive clod!
Microsoft won't kill the Zune. Or at least they better not and here is why:
1) They would never be able to sell music again ever... EVER. After play for sure people were cautious to buy another microsoft DRM'ed product. "Fool me once shame on me..." Microsoft wants to sell music through Xbox, through Windows Mobile, through the PC. They want to sell music in the future. Killing the Zune would end that dream. Killing the Zune would end Microsoft's Live Media sales in the in the music department permanantly.
2) They want to integrate it into WM for free. As soon as Windows Mobile has Zune then hit has a decent media player. It's already running a custom Windows Mobile build so it shouldn't be too difficult.
3) The XBox. The XBox is still successful (Profits were up.) Microsoft already sells movies. It's only a matter of time before the music store is available as well.
4) They're in second place! A distant second perhaps. But it's hard to argue to kill a team which has succesfully managed to go from nowhere to second place in only 2 years.
We might not ever see another hardware Zune. But the Zune concept isn't going to die. I think we're going to see Zune follow the classic arc of:
1) Play for sure commodity software.
2) Hardware iPod competitor
3) Commodity software.
Microsoft probably wants to get out of the vertical market competition with Apple. They aren't winning and they can see the writing on the wall as well as apple. The 'music player' is nearing the end of its marketability. It's time to to start fighting over the 'all in one' device. The cell phone.
You put Zune on every Windows Mobile 6.5 device and you've got more Zune Players than iPhones. How is that for a reversal?