Microsoft to Launch Zune in EU 220
An anonymous reader writes "Happy with the sales from the little brown music player here in the states, Microsoft is working to launch the Zune media player in Europe by the end of the year. According to the Washington Post article, they are trying to have a realistic outlook on the entrenched Apple product line. They're not trying to play catch-up at the moment ... they're just trying to get on the map. From the article: '"Our next round of introductions will probably be in time for the holiday of this year." [Jason Reindorp] said Microsoft planned extensive research with focus groups in Europe to see how it could be modified for a European consumer. He said the Zune had a 10.2 percent market share in the U.S. in the 30 gigabyte category, according to the latest data, and that it was still in line to sell over a million units by June 30, the end of its current fiscal year.'"
The "30 GB cathegory"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fishy Numbers (Score:4, Interesting)
the Zune had a 10.2 percent market share in the U.S. in the 30 gigabyte category, according to the latest data...
That's fishy to me because it sounds like they mean of concurrent sales (meaning it wouldn't include people who bought 30gb iPods when Apple still made them in that size).
What that means is, of all media players sold this year that store 30GB of data that aren't iPods, the Zune has a 10% market share which, factoring in Apple's huge part of that market, is much, much smaller a percentage than it sounds like.
Triv
I've got a Zune (Score:5, Interesting)
The market share percentage is misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
The market share percentage is certainly misleading when you look at the raw numbers: the Zune was introduced in November, and by June (7 months later) they say they will have sold 1 million. On the other hand, Apple sold 21 million iPods in the last quarter alone [wikipedia.org], and over 8 million in each of the previous 3 quarters.
In other words, by June Apple should be selling about as many iPods every 10 days as there were Zunes sold in 7 months. Put it that way, and it's hard for Microsoft to brag about.
Re:Focus groups (Score:4, Interesting)
The main problem is the perception that it wasn't built for the consumer, but for the media producers. This is another one for the bargain bucket if you ask me.
I'm sure the designers were able to convince themselves that users want Zune style restrictions in their media experience, but history shows that people will gravitate towards the simplest device that meets their needs, and the Zune isn't it.
The sad thing is there is probably some kickass hardware in the thing, but it's been tasked, as I said, to suit media producers first, which is the wrong way round.
Re:Focus groups (Score:3, Interesting)
The news just came after I have started noticing iPods around me more often than before. I guess with iPod Nano and its price Apple had finally nabbed European market. I welcome M$ to challenge the 150€ price of 4GB iPod Nano.
I have had two non-iPods before and have to confess that iPod is most invisible of all: SanDisk Sansa does often needs to be booted up and boot takes ~10-15 seconds (important to add that sound quality - just like on recent Creatives - sucks big time) and Philips SA117 had just too inconvenient menu which forced you to do N clicks for no apparent reason all the time (and it didn't supported anything beside MP3/WMA - no NG (e.g. AAC or OGG) formats).
iPod? Turn off "Hold" and it is instantly ready - right were you left it week ago - for you commands. Doesn't support OGG - but does AAC. Much better than that "PlaysForSure" crap. OMG! STOP. Didn't M$ dropped support for "PlaysForSure" with Zune? Oh yeah, well, what ever, what ever. I'll stick with iPod - for the time being.
P.S. As Eropean customer, I can say several things. Most important, people here are not that "computerized" when compared to Asia or North America: traditions prevail and computers for what little they can do are too expensive. (Hint: loading/charging with computer only == hard sell.) Also price is very sensitive issue and player above 300€ has few chances to be popular: preserving traditions takes its toll - normally in form of exaggregated taxes (all around Europe). And of course artist lobby groups [wikipedia.org] who have lobbied themselves into state laws long time ago would want to have a share of the feast too - just like they did with most of storage media already. Would M$ be still competitive to Apple which have ironed all the problems in past three years? Wir werden sehen.
Re:The market share percentage is misleading (Score:3, Interesting)
Your feature list would cripple the product.
Not easy to do well. Either it has a horrible UI (like all of the no-name players you mention) which can't handle searching by ID3 tags, or it has to do its own indexing. The latter is not easy - even recognizing when new files show up is not trivial, given that the computer is talking to it through the USB mass storage interface as a block device! It would have to have some weird code to translate the block requests back into filesystem requests and check on each request until the whole file shows up, or just suspend while talking to the computer (no music when it's plugged in) and walk the entire filesystem for changes afterward (probably slow).
I think mini-USB connectors have extreme current limitations. It'd either have low battery life or would take forever to charge. Is carrying around the (included) iPod cable so much of a problem that you're willing to accept that tradeoff?
My 1GHz G4 PowerBook skips when playing fancier, newer codecs. Do you think they can make an affordable, low-power, miniaturized system that has even a fighting chance?
Development and UI testing take time and money. There doesn't seem to be much money left after the cost of your hardware, and sometimes design choices are incompatible with having a good UI. There are certain patented interface options (scroll wheel, some touch screen stuff now) not available to most vendors, either.
Miniaturization is expensive, and flash is still more expensive than spindle. You were just talking about video, so you probably want a lot of space, too.
You've listed a bunch of features which aren't that important to most consumers yet would cripple the product and send its cost through the roof. If these no-name players do all of these...well, no wonder why they're no-name players. They made poor design decisions.
Opinion on the Zune (Score:5, Interesting)
It discusses:
- MS Zune's does not work with MS Windows Vista
- MS Zune's incompatibility with (even) MSN Music Format (you have to rebuild your music collection)
- 4 registration's before buying music from the Zune music store (when player installs, MS passport, Music Store Website, Tag registration)
- Zune points for buying music, to mislead consumers on the price of music (1 Zune point > 1 dollar, thus 0.79 ZunePoint looks cheaper)
- Zune player WiFi music share expires songs shared after 3 times listening or 3 days (whichever comes first)
Hilarious!
See also: CNN.com ridicules Zune Player [google.com]
Re:Focus groups (Score:3, Interesting)
My roomate is Vietnamese and she asked me to rip some cassettes so that she could listen to them on her new iPod nano. So I had a grand old time entering the song names and artists in Vietnamese, complete with all the accents and such. When we moved it to her iPod, I was curious as to whether it would have a problem with this or not.
Nope. No problem. All the accents and everything else came through with flying colors.
How is Zune with international information?
Re:Zune (Score:3, Interesting)
And had a store for the tunes with prices 50% lower with a full catalog....
People buy iPods because they can use it at the hottest online music store. Nobody buys a Zune so they can shop at the MS Zune store. I haven't heard one rave review of the wonderful selection and prices at the Zune store except one person here in this thread. Someone likes the Subscription model for unlimited downloads. Other than that, I have not heard anything about the online music store.
Re:I don't believe it (Score:3, Interesting)
With all the ribbing, who would admit to having one? If I got one for Christmas, I would stick it in my pocket and keep it there. I might pick up a nice pair of white headphones to go with it.