Zunecorp Podcast

Zunecorp Just released their first Podcast! On the Show they interviewed Bill Wittress and David Caulton of the Zune team.

CHECK IT OUT!

Robbie Bach: Zune is a multi-years investment project

from cliczune.com

Q: You’ve said that the investment horizon for the Xbox is multiple years. What is the investment horizon for the Zune. Is it as long as Xbox?

A: Well, it’s of a different nature. First, as we said earlier, the economics of the investment, the size of the investment have a big difference. That’s the first point to note. The second point to note is the business works differently. There’s new hardware every year. It cycles in a model that’s very different from the video game model, where you’re sort of in for five or six or seven years and then you’ve got the next version of the product, and you have the chance to make the next incremental leap. So, by nature, I think the investment horizons and investment cycles are different. On the other hand, I’ll say our competitor in the music space has 80% market share. Sony only had 60. So, that’s a little different dynamic. I think that’s also true. But, yes, it’s multi-years, just to get back to your original question. It’s definitely multi-year.

An interesting article with Robbie Bach was published by A+E interactive. Robbie Bach is the president of Microsoft, Entertainment and Devices Division (Xbox and Zune). The article is very long but if you want to have a better understanding of Microsoft strategy in the entertainment market, this article is for you. You will also clearly see that the Zune can’t be a “fly by night” and Microsoft is going to back the product for a long time.

Share Zune Wallpapers on Flickr: Zune Art!

I made a group pn Flickr for all the Zune fans to share and find Wallpapers on Flickr. Most people have Flickr so its an easy way to add and find stuff. Check it out and Join!

JOIN HERE!

Zune is Number 2?

According to this Report the Zune outsold Sandisk making it on the list right behind Apple. The gap though, its pretty big. For the week ended Nov. 18, Microsoft had a 9% unit share and 13% dollar share of the U.S. portable player market, while Apple had 63% unit share and 72.5% dollar share.

“Microsoft attracted early adopters in a successful launch week for Zune, eking out SanDisk as the No. 2 digital audio player vendor,” NPD’s Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis, said in a statement. “This was especially impressive given the Zune’s single capacity configuration and relatively high price point.”

Still, the Zune was outsold by players that are compatible with Microsoft’s PlaysForSure technology as a group, he said.

The new statistics are a bit of encouraging news for the beleaguered behemoth which has received less-than-stellar reviews of its new music player and has been handily outsold by its competitors on sites like Amazon.com (AMZN - commentary - Cramer’s Take - Rating) since the holiday shopping season kicked off on Friday.

Microsoft shares added 21 cents to $29.60 in recent trading on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Apple slipped 19 cents to $91.62 while SanDisk shed 84 cents to $43.93.

Article from here

Wednesday Links

Microsoft’s muscle hasn’t helped Zune
The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News Wed, 29 Nov 2006 1:00 AM PST
Last month, I decided to review the new Zune MP3 player. After all, Microsoft’s potential iPod killer had already received a fair bit of buzz.