Zune sunset

Zune II

Not entirely surprising but Microsoft Zune team is already making more of the store and the experience and less of the player which frankly has been a dud, despite the millions and millions spent on marketing. Always very much a ‘me too’ product, the Zune experience has been a catalogue of seemingly obvious mistakes. Now it looks like the Zune is doomed.
Why try to be iTunes? There’s already an iTunes, it’s massively popular and no there isn’t a latent audience of MS lovers just waiting for the company to launch its own product.
Limited compatibility and stifled sharing? Why, what’s in it for the user? Way too much like hard work.
DRM? – nuff said.
The design was good and the radio integration was neat but what was really required for MS was an external company to develop the proposition hardware and store separate from the mothership and its influence rather than be born out of Redmond and then try and become independent.
It won’t be missed…

~ by Mike Hales on January 11, 2009.