MacDailyNews Take: Zune has no future. It never did.
Letzing continues, “Designed to rival Apple Inc.’s iPod, Microsoft’s Zune first appeared in late 2006, but has struggled to chip away at the iPod’s dominance… ‘If Zune were going to make a strong move against the iPod, it already would have,’ said IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian.”
MacDailyNews Take: Which reminds us, in the case of the Zune: “Paging Dr. Kevorkian… paging Dr. Kevorkian…”
Letzing continues, “Revenue for the non-gaming side of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices unit, which includes the Zune, tumbled 42% to roughly $211 million for the fourth fiscal quarter ended in June… ‘The market reception for Zune is so disappointing that many retailers have even stopped selling it altogether… Microsoft should abandon Zune and follow Apple’s strategy to try to make its presence felt in the high-growth smartphone sector,’ said George Kurian, a vice president at Tradition Capital Management LLC, which owns Microsoft shares.
MacDailyNews Take: General rule of thumb: When your product’s name has become the latest slang for fecal matter, it’s probably doing your company more harm than good.
Letzing continues, “”The easiest way for Microsoft to do that, Kurian said, would be to simply purchase Palm Inc. Palm’s Pre smartphone, released in June, has been touted as a viable rival to the iPhone. Tradition Capital Management does not own any Apple or Palm shares.”
“The last mention made in company filings of the Zune’s performance had come in a fiscal second-quarter report, where Microsoft said revenue at its Entertainment and Devices division was undercut by a 54%, or $100 million decline in Zune platform sales,” Letzing reports. “NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin said in the first half of this year, Zune’s share was 2%, compared to about 70% for the iPod.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The lack of a monopoly built on ideas appropriated from Apple equals yet another abject failure for derivative Microsoft.
It’s doing well. We knew what we wanted… We wanted to have a reputation of doing something innovative… We feel great about Zune. – Bill Gates, January 23, 2007
In a word, no. – Steve Jobs, October 15, 2006, when asked by Newsweek’s Steven Levy if Microsoft’s Zune had him worried.
Any product that is essentially a copy of something else… there’s something inherently less interesting about them. Because the companies that make them don’t lead, they follow. – Paul Thurrott, March 19, 2009
I thought they killed off Zune long ago. My bad.
Put a fork in it ,it’s done. Zune over
Only 2%!!! Lol!
Best put the old dog out of it’s misery and shot it now (and the Zune! Boom-tish!)
I have enjoyed having that brown turd around to mock and make fun of.
@MDN Take:
Actually Dr. Kevorkian finds the Zune user interface quite useful for his work.
“analyst says pull the plug”
shouldn’t they ‘push the lever’?
All your base are belong to us
oh wait, they never had a base, just Uncle Fester and his kids who aren’t allowed to buy iPods.
“analyst says pull the plug”
But these analysts don’t know jack shit… right?
“…We’re in the game, we’re driving our innovation hard… At the end of the day, he (Jobs) is gonna have to keep up with an agenda that we’re gonna drive as well…” – Ballmer, 2007
Wait… Who’s gonna have to keep up with who, again?
2% It’s that high?
In the last few years, I’ve seen exactly ONE Zune in the wild.
And I’m sure that dude owns an iPod by now . . .
What’s even more pathetic is that Microsloth will continue to fund this stinky POS till hell freezes over. They have that guaranteed quartely money generating POS monopoly to keep pumping money to that piece of turd. Microstink will not give up till they win through sheer monopoly funded force. That’s whatbstinks about these Microstank products.
I have never seen a Zune in the wild.
That 2% Zune share is the US market only even though they sold about 15% of those US Zunes in Canada and Mexico.
I have seen one Zune (actually two, but the first one doesn’t count because it was given to the person as part of a promotional deal and I have no idea if she still or ever used it).
The guy who had it liked it fine. It did what he wanted – just an mp3 player. He doesn’t use if for squirting or anything else. (Where would he squirt?)
That backwards Zune logo looks suspiciously like anus, only with an ‘e’. I also have yet to see a Zune in the wild.
I’ve never once seen a Zune in the wild.
I lolerskated around the room at the sight of that picture!
can’t polish a Zune!
If Microsoft was really serious about its “diet,” that previous story would have been accompanied by the announcement of Zune being discontinued. Instead, Microsoft will no doubt try to showcase Zunes in their new Microsoft retail stores (yet another wasted venture).
Kevin writes, “oh wait, they never had a base, just Uncle Fester and his kids who aren’t allowed to buy iPods.” I’m pretty sure the Ballmer and Gates kids can’t wait until they’re “emancipated” and – trust fund babies that they are – can buy what they want.
Like Midwest Mac, I’ve only seen one Zune in the wild – on a DC subway. All alone… with no one to squirt to. Very sad.
My friend had a Zune for about a month. It’s an iPod touch now…
I’ve seen a few Creative Zens; those aren’t so bad. I guess that’s why they’re #2.
The only ones they ‘zuned’ with these players are Microsoft’s so-called “partners”, which licensed wma/v-based drm, which Microsoft ditched for a one-off drm scheme that only the Zune was allowed to use. Their zune players/store MIGHT be a little more successful if they had let other’s into their sandbox…unlikely, but possible.
Their emphasis will be on the Zune HD as a media platform. For it to have any chance they should name it something else.
Ok, you can try this experiment at home
Google “image search” iPod and Zune, separate of course, d’oh
Get back pics and logos for each of them, of course, but …
Dig in 5 or 6 pages, will eventually find pics with some “humans”
iPod – Hot Babe in Bikini with iPod strapped to her ass
Zune – Fat Guys in Prison showing off their tats
How many words was it a picture is worth ?
BC
Has anybody seen a Chinese Zune knock off? I mean if they thought Zune would have future they would make them.
I think Microsoft should work on that ANUZ logo, the “eye” just doesn’t look healthy, it should be brown at least.
@Yoyo:
The current Zune IS a Chinese knockoff!
Love the ‘upside-down’ Zune logo…
at first glance i thought it said ‘anuz’…
lol
MaWo: ‘meaning’.
Where the hell is $211 million coming from?!?!?!
BC Kelly:
That is incredibly hilarious, as well as totally true (just checked)! The fat guy with a tattoo in those pictures is that moron who tattooed Zune logo on his forearm. If I remember well, he was also planning to legally change his name to Microsoft Zune…
Not to stir the water but I have a “friend” who has owned 2 ipods and 1 zune. The ipods’ hard drives went bust. One was an original ipod that lasted not quite 2 yrs., the 2nd ipod lasted slightly over 2 yrs. He got the zune as a gift at about the same time he got the 2nd ipod. The zune (are u ready) is still going strong with no problems.
“Microsoft should abandon Zune and follow Apple’s strategy to try to make its presence felt in the high-growth smartphone sector”
More hilarity. Microsoft had a 9 year head start with a true smartphone and they couldn’t even keep up to a company that started out making pagers.
@From the front,
Uh, huh.
Arnold Ziffel
@From the front,
Uh, huh.
meh. Could be true. Depends on how they are treated. But from friends and family, I have first hand knowledge of at least 20 iPods(from original Minis to Touches) , and the worst problem any of them has had was file transfer issues relating to a crappy motherboard.
Zune…… LOL. Turn right, continue past the Microsoft store, the Apple store is right down the hall. MS is dead on their feet, they just do not know it yet.
I hope Microsoft reconsiders and keeps the Zune going. I mean if they pull the plug on the Zune’s cradle (a place where the sun don’t shine), can you imagine the mess it is going to make in a few dozen bathrooms. Not to mention the stink.
At least by keeping the Zune going you know that someday some obnoxious ectoplasmic moron is going to explode and spontaneously combust eventually. The heat helps to burn off most of the mess and smell I hear.
Speaking of which, I see some dimwit is joining the crickets. Talk about cruelty to animals.
There really is no “could be true” factor here. The ipods were treated great as was the zune. Good grief, for a number of reasons, sometimes, bad things occur with apple products thru no fault of the user. Except for his ipods, my friend tells me he has no reason to doubt that, overall, he believes that apple products have a better track record than other producers’ products in terms of quality or length of life. He’s been a Mac user since 1984 & still has his original macs, including a Mac SE, 12in PB. His compaq, his ibm’s are all gone to computer heaven/hell.
Maybe Microstink should keep the Zune around. It’s a great inpirational tool for firing off jokes and what not!
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I filled my Zune up with Powerpoint Presentations.
Now its not just a piece of shit…it’s full of shit
Predrag
Yea, bless his heart
And my bad, he’s not in Prison
Probably just his Mom’s Basement
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BC
As with many posters, I have never seen a Zune in the wild.
I have seen some at Walmart though, hidden beneath layers of dust in locked display cases.
May the Zuny M$ die a slow agonizing death …
Flush that chain – the Zune is dead and good ridden to shit technology.
I always laugh when I see that pic of the brown Zune – its genius! :DD
Never seen a zune by the way… arent they some sort of endangered species that the human race wants to make extinct???
Oh sorry – I forgot, that’s Microsoft AND the Zune.
The Zune will one day be in the Museum of shit design alongside the Microsoft OS, a bottle of Ballmer’s sweat and Bob the electronic paperclip.
I think I am going to buy one. I guess 100 years from now it will be the main object in World Historic POS Museum. It will be a collectors item by that time.
@ Petey, I should have read the feedback to the end, because now I have a double post.
Great minds thin a like
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No, really. I want to know where $211 million in Zune revenue comes from.
Anybody?
Don’t people realize that number of zune’s that have been sold are mostly micro$oft fan boys who can’t stand to own anything apple? including my bro who has been through 5 of them, all hardware failure. He came to his senses and bought an iPod Touch!
I love this part:
“Microsoft should abandon Zune and follow Apple’s strategy to try to make its presence felt in the high-growth smartphone sector,’ said George Kurian, a vice president at Tradition Capital Management LLC, which owns Microsoft shares.
Translation: “Microsoft has had no luck copying Apple in this arena, so they should try copying Apple in another arena, said a Microsoft shareholder“
Yes, even Microsoft’s shareholders believe that Microsoft should just chase Apple at full speed until the entire company has a heart attack and dies. Microsoft: chock-full of stupid from the CEO to the shareholders.
——RM
“The easiest way for Microsoft to do that, Kurian said, would be to simply purchase Palm Inc. Palm’s Pre smartphone, released in June, has been touted as a viable rival to the iPhone”
So, they should follow the same strategy for smartphones as they did for Zune (repackaging crap from another company as a turd)?
Wow. Great idea.
Microsoft has too much hubris guiding its decisions to abandon Zune. Come to think of it, 99% of everything the company does is guided by arrogance and vanity. Management feels that such a vaunted company must have a hand in every pot, even if the only thing they have to offer is mediocrity.
I’m planning to buy one.
When they hit the liquidators for $10 or so, I’ll pick one up, and keep it in my office to show to anyone who needs to be reminded that doing business with Microsoft is a risky proposition.
Zune wasn’t just an attempt to grab some market share, it was an attempt to grab market share by fucking over all of the companies that had jumped on their “Plays For Sure” bandwagon.
-jcr