Zune is no PC

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 03:25

Opinion and Analysis

Tales of how Microsoft was able to bulldoze over Apple in the personal computing space are legendary and often quoted. Now, some market watchers are suggesting that Microsoft should use the same tactics with Zune to smash Apple's dominance with iPod. The suggestions are nonsense.

The reason that the PC running MS-DOS and later Windows became the universal personal computer instead of the Macintosh was because Microsoft was able initially to leverage off IBM's dominance in the business market and then with the help of Intel to successfully commoditize the business desktop. Wintel desktops became synonomous with business at the dawn of the personal computing age, business users started taking work home, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 started to make a home PC more palatable and the rest is history.

For home users, the unsightly and user-unfriendly PC started out as a flop compared to the elegant and user-friendly Mac but triumphed in the end because of its success in business. The Zune has also started out as a flop and it is going to end up a flop. There is no Wintel alliance and business user scenario to save the Zune.

Microsoft is trying to enlist the support of the recording industry and get record companies onside by giving them a cut of Zune player sales. This will fail. iTunes is turning over hundreds of millions of sales each year and growing, iPods dominate the top 10 positions on the Amazon best seller electronics consumer devices list while Zune players can't even get into the top 100. Despite their posturing, record companies know on which side their bread is buttered and they may not like it, but they know that Apple and Jobs call the shots in the online music business.

Then there are the suggestions that while Zune may not take market share from iPod, it will crush the rest of the competition. Even this assumption is highly questionable. Both the Sandisk Sansa and Creative Zen are easily outselling Zune and both have access to bigger ranges of music from online stores which are compatible with Microsoft's own PlaysForSure DRM standard.

Microsoft's Zune team has reportedly denigrated PlaysForSure, saying it was broken. Well perhaps Microsoft should have concentrated on fixing it because a Zune running Windows Media Player with PlaysForSure, with an option to buy music and videos from a wide range of stores would seem to make a lot more sense than what the company has in place now.