Reindorp told Reuters that “The industry moves in this sort of Christmas to Christmas cycle. So you can expect that there will be more devices, more features in the market at that point. Our next round of introductions will probably be in time for the holiday of this year.”

He also said that they had conducted focus groups to see how Zune could be modified for European customers, and acknowledged their plans were well advanced to take Zune to the next level.

Despite Steve Jobs’ niggling in his Macworld keynote that Zune had little impact on the iPod, Reindorp told Reuters that Zune had a 10.2% market share in the US, in the 30 gigabyte category.

But now that the iPhone has been launched, with its revolutionary new control system, making the buttons used on competing mp3 players and even Apple’s own click wheel seem archaic, Microsoft are surely working on a Zune that is worthy enough to compete.

After all, rumours have already surfaced that Apple’s true ‘Video iPod’ is yet to be launched, one that blends the iPhone’s control systems with a device that holds an 80Gb or 100b hard drive, and that this model is already finished, in production and is waiting for an announcement from Steve Jobs in the not-too-distant future before it is unleashed onto the world.

Engadget has also reported on another big problem facing the Zune – one that makes its vaunted wireless sharing feature, known as ‘squirting’, almost redundant.

According to Engadget, Universal and Sony are prohibiting certain tracks from being shared wirelessly, with an image at the story linked in this paragraph showing that only some of the songs selected for squirting were able to be shared wirelessly, with the message on the Zune’s screen, being “Can’t send some songs because of rights restrictions” saying it all.

Of course, the iPod and the iPhone don’t offer this feature at all, although SanDisk’s new ‘Sansa’ mp3 player is the second big-name mp3 player to offer Wi-Fi capabilities, reportedly going as far as allowing you to access music stores when in range of a wireless connection and downloading music right to the new Sansa.

As has been said many, many times about Microsoft in the past – they often take around three goes to get something right. They seem to have broken this law with the Xbox 360 – it’s only the second Xbox model, after all, and despite the incredible success of the Wii, it is still the global next-gen gaming champion in terms of hardware and software sales.

The big question is… can Microsoft break the ‘takes 3 goes’ rule with the Zune, and deliver a killer product that can decisively compete with the true iPod video and the iPhone? In an industry worth billions of dollars, it could well be the new $64 billion dollar question.
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