What are your thoughts? Think MSFT will succeed or are they a little bit too late on a market that's dieing down? http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/21/technology/microsoft.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
Name one thing Microsoft has done well in the past 5 years. This is like when Dell decided to get into the printer business and we all know how well that's working. Besides, aren't there a number of competing products already on the market?
How was the profitability of the Xbox?I might be a indication on the probability of this Zune making money
MSFT has been very successful at introducing online updates of XP, which a lot of users have automated. A couple more years like this and they are on their way to introducing a subscription model to their OS, which will erase piracy. Of course, they will still have OS competition from Apple, Linux etc That's the one thing
I think the trend is towards all-in-one hardware units that will perform all required functions - cell phone, music player, text and email access. So in that sense the market for stand-alone mp3 players might have peaked. It'll be a while, though. MSFT better not make the mistake of making a player that can only play one kind of unconvertible file. They've been known to be a bit protectionist in the past, but I don't think it will work in this field. Right now, the iPod is the must-have unit among kids - an iRiver unit won't do. MSFT will have to find some way to break into the youth market since I see that as the market that drives overall sales of these things.