TheZune player continues to struggle against strong competition from it’s own “Playsforsure” partners Creative and SansDisk, both soundly beating the Zune player in sales.
“Apple has dominated sales of MP3 players almost since it entered the market five years ago. In contrast, there are already questions about how sustainable Microsoft’s Zune sales will be. NPD’s own [...]

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The release of the Zune Player has been, despite the concerted PR effort, as exciting as a new flavour of Heinz beans. Unlike the chaos and excitement of the launching of the Wee Wii and the Playstation 3, the Zune was met with a chorus of negative reviews.
My favorite is Andy Ihnatko of Sun Time [...]

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The delivery of the Zune player to the market came and went on Tuesday. There were no long lines of bleary eyed gamesters, no mad rush, crushing crowds or excited Japanese teenagers unlike the cult like delivery of the Playstation yesterday. This probably does not mean terribly much in the longer run but as someone [...]

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Continuing on the topic that intrigues me is how much vertical integration is needed in consumer products to make them a great consumer product. Just like the Palm Pilot before it, the IPod is the quintessential 21st Century consumer hit, however it is characterized by a highly integrated experience from design all the way through [...]

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As you have seen from previous posts I have been pondering why Sony failed to match the success of the iPod with it’s Walkman line of products when all of the good money was on Sony doing just that. This failure of Sony to capture this market could hold some good lessons for Microsoft as [...]

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Steven Levy (Insanely Great) has a new book out called “The Perfect Thing”. A gushing rendition on the whys and wherefores of the most successful consumer device ever.
On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology — if not necessarily for its dominant market share — launched a product with [...]

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Mike Elgan, who is the author of last weeks Computer world article “Opinion: Why Microsoft’s Zune scares Apple to the core” has kindly responded to my posting last week. I have taken the time to response in more detail this week.
The State of Play
It is now common knowledge that first part of the iPod [...]

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