That’s Not a Lump of Coal in Your Stocking, Honey. It’s a Zune!
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 18, 2008 at 1:59 PM PT
Chuck: Do we carry any Rush CD’s?
Morgan: No, but not to worry buddy! I have every Rush track on my Zune.
Chuck: Wait, you have a Zune!?
Morgan: Pfft! No, I’ll go get my iPod.”
– Some recent dialogue from NBC’s “Chuck” (see video below)
Microsoft is adapting its Zune digital music player to the “realities of the market”–those created by recent turmoil in the economy, as well as the harsher ones created by Apple’s (AAPL) iPod juggernaut. It’s slashing prices across the Zune line in the hopes of protecting holiday sales.
Once priced at $199, the 16GB Zune will now sell for $179. It’s 8GB counterpart will sell for $139, down from $149. And the 4GB Zune will sell for $99.
The price cuts come just two months after Microsoft (MSFT) introduced the third-generation Zune platform. “Hopefully we have a good holiday season,” Zune marketing director Adam Sohn told CNet’s News.com. “We’re trying to take into consideration what the realities of the market are.”
Those realities being as harsh as they are, is $10 to $20 off really going to be enough to trump financial concerns and temper long-running consumer disinterest in the device?
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Comments
don’t count Microsoft out. They have a long history of coming from behind to win.
Their first handheld OS (Win CE, or “wince” as some called it) was pathetic versus the mighty Palm Pilot, but after a few revisions it got better and today it’s won, though that’s partially because Palm is run by bean counters who don’t innovate.
Microsoft has pretty much blown away the competition in every field it has entered. Mind you, I have an iPod 80G and I have no intention of trading it in for a DRM-crippled thing like Zune, but you know, people will just see it in the store and buy it without thinking.
Most of this stuff is going to migrate to cell phones anyway, once cell phone makers figure out how to add a regular mini-headphone jack (come on, Nokia, how hard can that be???) and maybe a mini-USB port so people can easily copy files (likewise, is this so hard?) and even (gasp!) charge their phones from a common charger. Also, make the flash memory easier to get out, like you don’t have to take off the back cover and lift up the battery. Well they’ll get there some day.
No I wouldn’t bet on Zune or any other specialized handhelds in this day and age. The future is bright for iPhone, gPhone, and similar hybrid everything machines, once they come down to the common person’s price range.
Posted by Terry Traub at November 18th, 2008 at 2:44 pmIn memory of MSFT….
Posted by Mark Light at November 18th, 2008 at 3:32 pm