This isn’t terribly surprising – the Zune HD was an excellent media player, while the iPod Touch was only a very good media player. But the iPod Touch could do everything else via its app ecosystem, while the Zune HD remained only an excellent media player with a few apps bolted on as an afterthought.
In addition, the Zune had the misfortune to enter a market dominated by the iPod, and while an excellent music player, it offered no compelling reason to switch from the iPod. And now the music player market has been subsumed into the smartphone / tablet market.
In the end, the Zune seems emblematic of Microsoft’s business strategy for the last ten years – too little, too late.
-JM
Microsoft has and has only ever had one revenue stream: DOS/Windows/Office, and 80% of that revenue comes through forced licensing, not open competition.
Name another successful product MS has ever had. Go ahead. I dare ya. (Not XBox. At current profit margins, it’ll MS at least another decade to recoup the billions it’s invested in developing that money pit.)
After all the Redmond hue and cry we heard about “innovating” during the anti-trust trials, it took Apple to teach Microsoft what the word really means. Microsoft hadn’t a clue.
Microsoft is a great *business*. It’s just not a visionary tech company. Even when it does things well, there’s usually someone else out there doing it better.
Yeah. Part of that comes from user lock-in. I know people using Windows XP and Office 2003, and they’ll only change when their computers finally die.