What 'Zune Mobile' is and isn't
Summary: Microsoft officials (finally) denied this week that the company will be rolling out a Zune phone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. But they didn't deny they have something called "Zune Mobile" up their sleeves.
Microsoft officials (finally) denied this week that the company will be rolling out a Zune phone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. But they didn't deny they have something called "Zune Mobile" up their sleeves.
Zune Mobile seems to be a set of Zune-specific premium services for Windows Mobile devices. These services are part of what I've been calling the "Pink" services for the past several months.
A few bloggers have talked in generalities about the fact it would be a no-brainer for Microsoft to move some of the Zune services to mobile devices. But Paul Thurrott was actually the first person I saw use the "Zune Mobile" name to refer specifically to this platform, after his meeting this week with the Windows Mobile team.
One of my tipsters, who requested anonymity, recently shared a bit more context on Pink/Zune Mobile.
"Your description (of Pink as Microsoft's forthcoming set of premium mobile-services) is fairly spot on as far as I can tell -- with the caveat that Pink is a 'customer' of Zune services in the music space...not the other way around. The Musiwave acqusition playing a part there."
(When Microsoft bought Musiwave back in 2007, there was quite a bit of talk of Musicwave bringing commerce capabilities to Windows Mobile platforms.)
I wasn't among the attendees of Microsoft's invite-only Mobius conference this week. I'm sure those folks, who are under non-disclosure, know more specifics. But if I were to guess what kinds of "Zune Mobile" services we might see announced at CES, I wouldn't be surprised to see more music purchase, playing, sharing and subscribing -- and maybe even a little something special for podcasters/podcast listeners, too.
Any other guesses as to what Zune Mobile is/isn't? And anyone have more thoughts on what kinds of other premium mobile services may be coming from the Pink team (from the Danger crew, especially)?
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Talkback
Of Course They Will Deny It
It'll come, just watch.
Why should they?
Let Apple, Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry bleed it out fighting the hardware wars.
apple gets full price for iPhones. AT&T pays the difference, not apple
the price of phones... not just for apple, this is for all phone
makers.
Enter more common platforms, via "business consolidation."
Even Steve Ballmer said they should be more Apple like...
They should rebrand Microsoft to "Pear."
Pears go off really quickly.
They're costlier than the more beneficial alternatives.
Ballmer's silhouette could be used.
Instead of teeth marks they should use beak marks.
RE: What 'Zune Mobile' is and isn't
Microsoft's Biggest Problem is not being second..
What Microsoft lacks is effective Marketing. Have you SEEN these Mixview commercials? Who would be convinced to buy a Zune after seeing one of them? The Zune is often made fun of, on late night TV (Conan O Brien and Colbert Report come to mind). Why WOULD anyone want to buy something people made fun of?
Here's something simple and easy: Give a ZuneOriginals Zune to Steven Colbert, with a picture of his DVD cover imprinted on the back. There's no way his persona's ego wouldn't positively acknowledge it on the air.
NO! That shows that the Microsoft brand is dead.
THEY can't figure it out though, because they're all too busy running around and billshutting as many people as they can, simply to please their shareholders, because that's the #1 right Steve?
Will someone please enlighten me as to how that is remotely conducive to a more optimal computing society, and society as a whole?
Zune Software on WinMobile... done!
worthless. it was a stupid name to begin with... i mean Zune? what
the !@#! were they thinking? terrible! then the media got a hold of it
and beat the hell out of the brand.. then iPhone and iPod Touch
came out further improving the iPod brand and the Zune brand
shrunk even further in relation (top of the iPod brand WAY higher
than the top of the zune brand)... then they had those stupid
commercials...
MS is just clueless about mass consumer products. so now the zune
brand it complete and utter trash so i don't know which is worse
adding the zune branding to WinMobile or adding WinMo's already
'yesterday's news' brand branding to Zune... they are in the same
boat as Sony they have a worthless brand to work with in this space.
maybe even worse than Sony because the zune brand actually bring
up negative connotations and the Sony brand is just neither here nor
there...
bottom line is that apple's conventional iPods will be/are
commodity/low margin products going forward and iPod
Touch/iPhone/handheld computer market is where the good margins
will be made... just be be relevant in this space MS needs a product
that not just equals the iPod touch/iPhone but actually rivals it in
some significant way(s)... doesn't seem possible for MS to pull off
given their record thus far... cannot seem to innovate. maybe the
answer for MS is to just get out of this space and stop hemorrhaging
money that it doesn't seem they are capable of recovering... earth to
MS, the train has left the station and you were not on it.
Couldn't have said it better
Really
Give me a reliable media source that made fun of the Zune name.
"MS is just clueless about mass consumer products."
As everyone has seen the other piece of hardware that the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft makes has been a huge flop due to there lack of knowledge about mass consumer products. *cough*360*cough* 30% Failure rate according to some people and it still sells better than some of the "better" competition. Yup clueless.
Once Apple gets me a device that can hold all my music at a reasonable price and that is superior to the Zune I'll buy it. Sorry Classic you just don't cut it. The other devices just lack space.
I do agree that MS needs something to compete with the iPod Touch. I do believe that the Touch is essentially worthless since for less money you can get the same thing as well as something else most people "need" to have, a phone.
RE: What 'Zune Mobile' is and isn't
Almost all aftermarket, and indeed, a lot of the factory installed stereos, have direct control over the ipods. This keeps the driver from trying to read the tiny screen and fumbling with the device while driving.
This is the reason my zune80 is sitting in a drawer and my new ipod120 is in the glove compartment.
You touched on an area where Apple is anti-competitive
Microsoft innovated the [url=http://www.syncmyride.com/]MS Sync system[/url] which will allow you to play and control almost any MP3 player, including the iPod and the Zune. Does Apple's system allow you to use almost any MP3 player or is the monopoly trying to keep other MP3 players out of the car? By using 100% proprietary connections, they have introduced a barrier to entry. Nice use of their monopoly!
Zune's not dead yet?
Zune. It is still iPod and SanDisk.
<sarcasm>We do have a special Gears of Way special edition
that I am sure to be a hot Christmas special.</sarcasm>
Yep time is ripe for the Zune Phone. MS has all that cash
they have to spend on something. Might as well deplete
some of the funds.
No one seems to care about that market
I do have another alternative, I could just plug it into the USB jack and use the normal radio controls but it doesn't support shuffle all, select by artist/album, or play lists. With 1,400 tracks I like to have some control over what plays and what doesn't.
To do all that I'd have to get an in car computer which is overkill.
Zune Mobile guesses
That would be a nice start. Maybe add Zune Marketplace access through WinMo so that music purchases made on the go would download to your central music library, while you could choose whether or not to sync them with your zune/winmo device at that time or later.
With 25gb avail on Skydrive already, plus 5gb on Mesh, you could easily put a portion of your music collection in the cloud now, even without additional storage allotted.
I love my Zune as is!
for myself, and wouldn't trade it. I love it. But the
idea of a Zune phone, Ill pass.
-contr0l @ http://newsfortechs.blogspot.com/
What's wrong with Zune Pass?
10 drm free songs to keep each month
and all the songs you can download for free
I can understand some dislike for it before because all your music was "rented" but with the recent addition to 10 songs to keep each month I can't say that for essentially $5 the ability to download all the other music is bad.
It's good to hear that people do understand that the Zune > iPod Classics, marketing doesn't make a device better as other arguments have been stating, it just helps in sales.
Yet, there's more value to a ZunePass...