What was the world missing? You guessed it! Yet another portable music player. And Microsoft decided to fill in the void with the now officially announced Zune player.
Zune is said to make a first appearance in the market later this year, while the details are kept behind a dark curtain of secrecy. Perhaps Microsoft is hoping surprise tactics will leave both consumers and competitors in awe after the unveiling of the product and of the music download service branded Zune as well.
There have been no official images of how the player will look like, but considering there’s Xbox people working on it as well, it should be a stylish piece of hardware. Can it beat iPod? I don’t think so. It is very unlikely people will throw out their iPods to get Zunes, not to mention Apple has managed to build a pop culture behind the world’s most popular portable music player - which would be very hard to rival.
However, Microsoft can afford a little extra spending money when it comes to marketing a new product, so be on the lookout for Zune events and appearances in the months to come.
People with Zune, will reportedly be able to use wi-fi to share music and playlist information with their friends. There’s no saying what other fun stuff will come bundled with it - I wouldn’t get my hopes high though. One critical factor on the success of Zune will be how open it is. And by “open” I mean how well does it work with others. For instance, if you’ve already payed a million dollars downloading your music via iTunes and you’d rather have Zune play it - you should be able to do that. Shouldn’t you? Or being able to play Zune music service downloads via iPod.
