Microsoft and Apple go up the hill

After months of research, Microsoft has finally launched Zune, its portable media player, with a ‘big bang’ on November 14. The device is Microsoft’s big bid to overpower Apple’s wildly successful iPod. The launch was heavily marketed and was marked by free concerts in six major US cities. To initiate the battle, Zune is available in just one 30GB model, that too in three colours. As far as pricing is concerned, Zune is competitively priced at $250 at par with iPod. Competing with Apple will be a herculean task for Microsoft, considering the fact that iPod has a monstrous 75% share of the digital music player market in the US and dominates more than half of the world market. Perhaps, this is the reason why Microsoft has dumped plans to try to overthrow the iPod by working with third-party MP3 player manufacturers. As Microsoft’s Zune is not part of the ‘Plays For Sure’ initiative (the firm licenses software). Consequently, songs bought from Napster, Rhapsody, AOL or Urge, for example, will not work with the player. Zune users must buy and download music from a dedicated Zune music store or split their own CDs and copy them on to the player. The hope is just that it gets better with time.

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Source:- IIPM Editorial

An IIPM and Management Guru Professor Arindam Chaudhuri's Initiative