Wal-Mart Leaks Zune Price 313
nieske writes, "Engadget reports that Wal-Mart accidentally published online the intended price of the Microsoft Zune; the iPod rival would apparently retail for $284. The price was quickly pulled from the Wal-Mart site. Reports say that Microsoft was flustered when Apple dropped the price for the iPod 30 GB, previously $299, to $249. BetaNews states that 'undercutting the iPod is a major goal of Microsoft's upcoming effort.' Will Microsoft respond to Apple with another price drop?"
Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
also, why is a zune price leak in the apple section?
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I see this as turning out like Apple's disastrous clone experiment, where the clone sales took away from Apple itself without expanding the Macintosh market any.
As for why this is in the Apple section, I guess it's because of the whole "iPod killer" leitmotif. Slashdot needs a section for handheld gadgets from MP3 play
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Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm serious. With their huge cash reserves, Microsoft could enter the market in toilet seats tomorrow, price them at 99 cents, drive everyone else out of business, and drive up the price to $10,000 a seat.
We've already seen them put Netscape out of business by giving away the browser, so can Apple (or any other manufacturer) cry 'foul' and accuse Microsoft of dumping? What are the laws in this situation?
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I really don't think that applies as many other businesses "dump" the product but make a tidy profit on the parts and accessories that go with them. I won't state the colloquial phrase for that practice because I think that phrase is dumb and over used.
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I would call this a simple price war, wh
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm serious. With their huge cash reserves, Microsoft could enter the market in toilet seats tomorrow, price them at 99 cents, drive everyone else out of business, and drive up the price to $10,000 a seat.
We've already seen them put Netscape out of business by giving away the browser, so can Apple (or any other manufacturer) cry 'foul' and accuse Microsoft of dumping? What are the laws in this situation?
Yes, and we all know how Microsoft ran up the price of Internet Explorer once Netscape was out of the picture...
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes we know, and for those skeptical people out there, here it is : they ran up the price by not paying anymore people on improving Internet Explorer. Which means that before, the price of Windows included the cost of the dev team on IE. After Netscape was out of the picture, the price of Windows didn't include that cost anymore, but was still the same.
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
It would give a new meaning to "per-seat license"
Re:Will MS respond? Yes. (Score:4, Funny)
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Not true (Score:5, Informative)
And:
Re:Not true (Score:5, Informative)
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Why do you assume they won't have it when the Zune comes out?
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The same to you. And I hope you're a troll, because if you're an idiot, you're very idiot. Did apple have a profitable music store before iPod?
Re:Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft, on the other hand, has tried numerous times to sell music online, and failed each time. That's their track record. What part of that is so hard to grasp?
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Running with that in mind, my thought was that for Apple to continue to operate like that, they would have to keep selling iPods at a higher % above cost over and over again to make up the difference or increase the cost of songs (which may cause a negative effect on sales and profit). Well, now enter competition and Apple recently released some minor changes to existing m
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I don't understand how you go from "MS Music Store: Failed", to "Different MS Music Store+Zune: Success" without a significant leap of faith.
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Sorry, who was talking about making much profit except for you?
Re:Not true (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft can bleed money, and not even notice it. More than that, the COGs of the Zune will fall, and, unlike the XBox, but like the XBox 360, Microsoft will be able to recoup those losses later on. MS is many things, but unwilling to learn from its mistakes is not one of those things.
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And since when has Microsoft learned from their mistakes? For decades they've been losing money on every venture except their core business. They continue to use the same business practices that landed them in court numerous times. They continue to make insecure software. I have never once seen the company learn from a mistake because they fail to acknowledge they've made any.
Re:Not true (Score:5, Funny)
They'll mark up the next Office by $100. Problem solved.
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A good use for the Zune (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, but my point is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A good use for the Zune (Score:4, Insightful)
What position would that be? They hold precisely zero percent of the mp3 player market share. Unless you are implying they are going to use their marketshare in OS to bolster their product - which is a pretty specious arguement if you ask me given that iTunes/iPods work great with windows. Now, if MS starts messing with things that give iTunes/Windows integration issues -then you have a pretty solid case. Of course that raises an interesting point... how well does Apple support Play's For Sure devices on its platforms? I'd wager less well than MS supports Apple products...
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Their financial position, I would guess. They could probably take a much larger loss than Apple, I would imagine.
Re:A good use for the Zune (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure MS is free to make Play's For Sure work on OSX
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Apple isn't the first competitor that MS has bullied into a crisis. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Even more interesting will be what happens in the EU, the EU government may not let MS get away with pushing it's only major competitor in the portable music market into a crisis.
Apple and the EU (Score:2)
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Re:A good use for the Zune (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolly troll. *sigh* I'll feed you...
Microsoft will also be (ab)using cheap labour to maintain profitability, it's how business is done. The shirt you are wearing, the computer you are typing on, etc... were all made using cheap foriegn labour. Apple voluntarily investigated the accusations, hired a third party to oversee, and has since been shown to be largely false. If Apple "abuses" anything, it's cornering the market on components
"Microsoft may be using their position to deliberately push Apple into a crisis."
Actually, it seems Apple dropping their prices has actually pushed Microsoft into a "crisis". Apple holds 75% of the digital music playing market, and it accounts for about 40% of their profits (all other coming from Mac and software sales). I'm not sure you know what you are talking about.
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Zune? WTF?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Zune? WTF?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Its something to listen to while drinking a Zima? [wikipedia.org]
Re:Zune? WTF?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Zune? WTF?!? (Score:5, Funny)
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About as much as "iPod" or "Walkman" did before they became the de facto portable audio devices of their day.
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Zune = Zebra (as in a horse designed by a committee) & a Tune (as in "Microsoft will own everying.")
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Re:Stereotypical German? (Score:2)
Eet ist nein vaporware! I tell you eet ist comink zune. ZUNE!
Sorry about that. Like most
Apple story not Mircosoft? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this have a successful precident for Microsoft?
Zune is a loss leader (Score:5, Insightful)
In the 1990's Microsoft spent thousands of man-hours creating a pen operating system that died on the vine. It was a pure cost to the company, no profit. But the key point is that it died AFTER the GO Penpoint operating system died. Martin Eller, one of the Microsoft staff involved, even has a quote in his book [amazon.com]:
"This wasn't a thing about making money. This was all about 'block that kick.""
Apple makes money selling iPods, but the big play for them is the iPod halo effect to sell more Macs. Macs (and Mac software) are much more profitable than an iPod. The release of Vista, with all its associated angst, represents a big opportunity for Apple. Microsoft will fight that halo effect with everything they've got, even if they have to lost money on every single Zune. They make their money from Windows, and this is all about protecting the Microsoft market (and mind) share.
It's doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Ipod is synonamous with MP3 player now. Even grannies going to the shops for their grandchildren will ask for an iPod by name. We say podcast, podcasting. I can't see people Zunecasting. Unless the Zune offers something substantially better or a great and highly compelling new feature (Actually, I've just thought of one, maybe I should copyright it right now..) no-one else has thought of then it's just not going to sell. The only hope MS have is to back it up with an extremely cheap song purchase system but I can't see them doing that without oodles of DRM involved.
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The point is that there are many alike, but there is only one iPod. That's why it sells and the others are - well - just players. It's just cool to have one.
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The people who disagree with you assume that consumers are smart, savy, and will carefully research products before buying. They're not. They're sheep who revel in impulse purchases and go with name recognition as the leading reason to buy a product. Sorry, but I have no faith in people. Of course, this is ultimately not a bad thing because MS deserves a few failures.
Re:It's doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
One major killer feature of the iPod are iPod accessories. If Microsoft wants to compete with the iPod, they'll need to be completely compatible with it.
I have an iPod adapter for my car radio. I hook my iPod up to it and can play directly through the radio. This isn't one of those little "FM radio car adapters" either. It puts the iPod into "control mode" or whatever they call it, and can change playlists and move through the playlist directly though the radio.
This is good, because the radio is designed to be easy to control from the driver's seat without looking at it. The most used buttons (skip song, volume) are shaped to be easy to tell by touch and are positioned to be within easy reach.
As far as I know, there is no adapter kit for my radio for any other MP3 player on the market. Only one for the iPod.
If Microsoft wants to compete with the iPod, the Zune needs to be able to support the accessory market. The iPod may not be the greatest MP3 player ever created, but it has the accessory market, and that provides a lot of value that Microsoft will be missing.
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Maybe in parts of the US. Around the world, people use lots of different kinds of MP3 players.
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I'm not in the US. The only place I can think where it's not likely to be synonamous is China or Japan but I don't know.
Ease of use vs price? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'm interested in though is how Microsoft are going to convert existing iPod owners over to their side. Aren't they offering something like the ability to download (for free) all the songs you have in iTunes onto your Zune from the Zune Marketplace, or are they going to copy all the existing songs from iTunes / iPod onto your Zune?
Re:Ease of use vs price? (Score:5, Insightful)
The other biggest failure of the Microsoft device will be that I dont care what service they couple with, iTunes has way more music selection on it that anything Microsoft can come up with.
I dont love the iPod, I'm a non drm kind of guy with my iRivers... but microsoft is not known for open and easy to use.
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I'm guessing the software for the Zune will be the pinnacle of usability known as Windows Media Player.
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iTunes is a mixed bag. If you completely subscribe to its world view, it works nicely. But there are some areas in which it is quite weak. For example, if you use one iPod and two computers, it doesn't work very well, and it keeps creating duplicate songs and entries for many people.
Overall, iTunes is the typical Apple produ
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Flexibility != ease of use. When "write a script" is a serious suggestion for how you should get a feature you want from your MP3 player, you've just moved yourself way outside the mainstream market.
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Are you serious? Why would you think many iPod owners would want to do that?
iTunes isn't perfect and it's getting more bloated all the time but it's a good full featured player. Sure there are better lightweight music players.
Where M$ would really do well with Zune would be ripping songs from XBox and downloading through XBox Live directly to Zune so that you could simplify things (for XBox owners).
It's Microsoft's only real potential advantage in the accessory market
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I'll be the first to say that not every interface is intuitive to everyone, but could you clarify what part of "connect iPod, iTunes syncs files" is difficult?
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When you first run iTunes, it gives you the option of scanning your computer for media. Once it's been added to the iTunes library (through the initial scan or later by importing CDs, buying music from ITMS, or dragging files in manually) it will automatically update the iPod libarary to match. This is the default behavior, you can go into Preferences and set it to manually update the iPod if you want.
I actually don't know how it handles more files in the library than there would be space for on the iPo
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J
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Apple
Sexy sells (Score:5, Funny)
So Microsoft, I propose you do this:
A dancing Ballmer silhouette.
My pulse is rising already just thinking about it.
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Re:Sexy sells (Score:4, Funny)
Ask and you shall receive: http://www.macboy.com/cartoons/ballmer/ [macboy.com]
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and the theme song should be: Skid Row - "Monkey Business".
(aw, crap, now I've got that song stuck in my head....ah, well, better than the image, I suppose)
Another one? (Score:2)
Big dif (Score:2)
The Zune has a totally different set of features, such as wireless connectivity and such, so if Microsoft sells it for anything less than a 30 GB iPod, it's just going to be another bl*wjob for Steve.
Would be good for consumers if they react (Score:2)
Eventually, Microsoft will have make a profit (Score:2)
There's always the hope (for Microsoft) that pouring money into these losers will allow them to drive competitors out of the market. But that isn't really a viable business strategy in the long run. Even the IE/Netscape battle wasn't really won based on Microsoft's ability to compete on price (free)--there was actually a time when Netscape sucked and IE was fairly good. That's
Lock-In (Score:3, Interesting)
So, Apple and Microsoft will both be pushing their own portable music players, with music being sold in formats that play nowhere else but in their own products. Hmm, where have we seen that before? Of course, neither of them is going to support the open and superior (in terms of audio quality) Vorbis.
What's funny about it is that Apple, which one one side professes to be all supportive of open source and open standards [apple.com], has been beating Microsoft at the lock-in game [inglorion.net] on the other side. I guess that battle will soon get a second round.
Lowest price - might be the winner (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, I'm not the average person. The average person is going to say, "well, time to get one of those iPod things," go to Target or whatever and say, "where are your iPods?" A store person is going to point to the MP3 player section, the person's going to see this thing and say, "well, that's the cheap one, I'll get that," and go home and use it.
That's the kind of person I see buying this. For the chic people, or tech people, the Microsoft brand might be too damaged, plus the player doesn't offer much new beyond the neat photo/song-sharing thing. Sure, the interface is flashy, but from what I've seen that would just get in the way for me.
The Zune (got what a horrible name, not even sure how to pronounce it) may succeed in being the first real iPod competitor, by sheer force of Microsoft's juggernaut market power, but I don't think it's enough to knock the iPod off its throne.
Apple iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
I like its weight, too. It seems sturdy enough though I have a rubber case for it with a neck strap that's long enough to fit in my shirt pocket. Although, I did have to stop turning the volume down while it was still in my shirt pocket - spinning a finger around my shirt-pocket-area did elicite a few strange looks (which were promptly explained away - much to their relief!!).
As for other players...I'm sure they have their pros and cons over the Apple iPod; but, I've grown to attached to Apple's product why should I change? I'm satisfied with iTunes as it works pretty damn well on my systems.
I'm not a serious Microsoft basher - they put food on my table - but why should I toss all my money at MS when Apple seems to have hit a home run?
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Title (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:My predictions were right,,, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My predictions were right,,, (Score:5, Interesting)
They have to be careful. If it is cheaper than the iPod, that could add to it's image of being a knockoff. It's like wine. People look at all of the bottles on the shelf and don't have any idea what the difference is, but their pretty sure that the $40 bottle is better than the $6 bottle, even though that isn't really true at all. Put yourself at best buy. The 30GB iPod (which you've heard of and seen before) is $249 and this Zune thing is $229. You quickly scan the specs, see that they are about the same, and figure that this Zune thing must just be a cheap knockoff. On the other hand, if it were $259, you might ask a salesperson what the difference is.
All of this is moot anyway - they went after the wrong market, IMO. The most popular iPod is the tiny little Nano. Unless they were trying to create a niche product, I'm not sure why they didn't go after the biggest market.
Who runs MS, anyway? Who thought it was a great idea to compete with their licensees? And then against Apple's iPod, where all others have failed? If I was a shareholder I'd be furious. If I were a licensee I'd be furious. If iPod sales ever go flat (don't they have to at some point?), Apple might get a nice reception to an offer to license FairPlay now... a real "plays for sure".
Re:Who pays standard retail prices for electronics (Score:4, Funny)
Re:iPod vs Zune = Netscape vs IE (Score:4, Insightful)
Netscape lost the battle over IE due to one primary reason: IE was pre-bundled with Windows.
Now, you may scoff at that, but think about it.
A person new to PCs and the internet goes to the local Wal-Mart/BestBuy or whatever, and buys a computer. They come home, get it set up (or more likely, get help from a friend/relative) and try to get to the internet. And what pops up? Various MS assistants that lead them directly to Outleak, IE, and WMP. Case closed. If that person wanted Netscape, they had to download it from somewhere, or get a copy on a CD from their ISP. And even though MOST ISPs sent a copy of Netscape to the customers in the late 90's, the damage was already done. Customers were now familiar with IE and Outleak, and had no reason to switch.
The difference today is that both Zune and iPods are a computer attachment. And the purchaser of said MP3 players won't be looking at a PC for the very first time 99% of time. Nor will it be their first time on the internet.
Apple is flat out DOMINATING the portable MP3 player market. I am sure they are working HARD to keep their trademark alive, so the iPod doesn't become the Xerox machine [wikipedia.org], or the next aspirin. Because iPods are now synonomous to the world with MP3 player.
I just don't see MS getting the Zune to that point.