by Playfuls Staff |
22nd July 2006
It’s now finally official: Microsoft is going to kill the iPod this Christmas! Although this is not breaking news, since everyone has been speculating about it for quite some time, the announcement is surely meant to scare Apple and other competitors.[more]
Microsoft confirmed the rumors about the iPod killer on Friday, stating that the future MP3 player is just one of a series of software and hardware products that are in production at Redmond.
Microsoft delegated Chris Stephenson, a general manager of marketing for Microsoft, to release the news to the press on Friday. He also mentioned the fact that the iPod killer from Microsoft is scheduled for Christmas (well, actually he said that the MP3 player and the other products will be available “by the end of 2006”…but hey! Isn’t the Christmas shopping season the most “hunted” by all manufacturers?).
Just as previously speculated, Microsoft confirmed to the delight of music fans that its iPod killer will feature wireless fidelity capabilities and a hard-drive (probably Flash-NAND based) for storing tunes. Since an MP3 player with Wi-Fi is nothing without a music download service, we should expect Microsoft to release an iTunes rival as well, although the company did not make official declarations about this in their press release.
Apparently, the Zune-branded products are under the umbrella of the Argo project that everyone was talking about a week ago. Seattle Times was reporting back then, citing inside sources from Microsoft, that the company’s mysterious iPod killer should come along with at least two more “side-kicks”. They are all supposed to be comprised in a project called “Argo”, which is apparently leaded by former X BOX co-founder J Allard.
The MP3 player that Microsoft is reading now apparently boasts, besides the wireless fidelity capabilities, with the possibility to receive a bonus of some kind if the owner of the gadget agrees to watch entirely an advert presented on the screen (bonus that ranges from a discount coupon to voucher) and probably a larger screen. The gadget shall receive an ad from an “Ad-Node”, through a sensor integrated into the MP3 player, which is a another indication of the iTunes rival that the Redmond giant is preparing.
Microsoft also hopes to attract users with is the possibility to share songs with those detaining the same Redmond-built device, using the wireless capabilities. You like a song, mark it for download and the rest is done by the MP3 player (aka the iPod killer).
Since the beginning of the rumors, speculations have been made about a larger screen than the current iPod’s and a serious orientation towards "Connected Entertainment", with interoperability between the device and X BOX Live! or Windows Mobile-powered handhelds.
“Under the Zune brand, Microsoft will build a community for connecting with others to discover new music and entertainment,” Microsoft said in a statement.
Microsoft’s also plans to cut from iTunes’ market share with a piece of software integrated into the small device that will examine your current iTunes library for songs you've already bought from iTunes and let you download them from the Microsoft store for free.
Rumor has it that Microsoft is even already in talks to secure licenses to sell digital content for its future MP3 player. The stakes for Microsoft extend beyond the online music market, said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media.
“It's becoming increasingly evident that video is migrating to the Internet, and Apple is getting a lead there as well.”
“I'm not surprised they decided to do this because the problem isn't just the iPod,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Communications. “It's that Apple controls a key point in the digital home. The customers flow to Apple, and that isn't good for Microsoft's ambitions.”
“Microsoft has decided it's going to be real important to control all parts of the chain in the music industry,” said Mike McGuire, an analyst at Gartner. “It will be interesting to see if they can pull that off. Sony and Apple are the only ones that have pulled that off so far. Microsoft has shown it can build an ecosystem of hardware and software with Xbox.”
For its part, updates to the iPod are among things that Apple is expected to show off at its annual developer’s conference in San Francisco next month. While wireless downloading is one possibility, analysts have speculated about an iPod cellphone or a new video iPod with a larger screen.
