CES and Macworld provide reminder for Microsoft

Stan Beer
Sunday, 14 January 2007 13:42

Opinion and Analysis

As the consumer launch of Windows Vista approaches both the recently completed Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld expo should provide Microsoft with a reminder of how the company became great - give consumers what they want. With the notable exception of Xbox 360, Microsoft seems to have forgotten that rule lately.

Microsoft's attempted foray into the portable music player space with Zune seems almost embarrassing for a company of Microsoft's stature in the wake of the competition that surfaced at CES and Macworld.

The Apple iPhone is so far ahead of Zune (and everything else) in functionality and style that it's probably not really fair to make a comparison since it's really a phone rather than just a music player. However, the new Sansa Connect from SanDisk does provide a direct comparison with Zune and it comes up trumps.

When Zune was launched, I believed that Microsoft missed a great opportunity to unleash the full capabilities of Wi-Fi. They told users that they could use Wi-Fi to "squirt" songs at each other - songs that would quickly disappear. Users told them through blogs that they didn't want Wi-Fi to share disappearing songs. They wanted Wi-Fi to enable them to do things like download music over the Internet or from their computers.

With Sansa Connect, SanDisk provides a perfect example of listening to the market and giving consumers what they want. The Sansa Connect enables users to put Wi-Fi to use in the way it was intended. With this neat little music player, users can buy and download music directly from the Internet without needing their computers. They can also stream Internet radio.

For US$250, the Sansa Connect only has a small 2.2 inch screen and limited 4MB flash storage. However, a music player untethered from a PC, as SanDisk puts it, will be something that many users will find worth having.

While many of us believe that Microsoft has missed an opportunity to provide users with the sort of Wi-Fi access to music that they want, Apple will also restrict its new iPhone to playing music and will not allow downloads through a mobile version of iTunes. The difference is that iPhone provides so much additional functionality in other areas and iTunes has such a big market share that Apple can afford to wait  until it is ready to provide a mobile version of iTunes. Microsoft doesn't have this luxury with Zune.

The good news for Microsoft is that can still make the Zune a more attractive device by enabling Wi-Fi downloads from its music store. The bad news is that Zune users will probably have to wait a long time for that to happen.