Zune, Zune, Zune!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 will be marked in technology history books as the day Zune landed. Zune is Microsoft's much-disparaged competitor to the Apple iPod personal digital media player and iTunes online digital media store. A lot of people have already declared Zune to be DOA. I say let the market decide.

I happen to personally subscribe to the philosophy that in general it takes Microsoft three releases to get something right. I seriously don't expect the first release of Zune to be a true iPod "killer", but I don't expect it to be a complete dud either. I fully expect that as the months and years go by we will see successive "generations" of Zune that become ever-more powerful, ever-more capable, ever-more desirable, and ever-more successful.

I say that each consumer should read the specs themselves and "kick the tires" themselves and make their own decisions about whether Zune works for them.

I have every confidence that Zune will be a very successful brand, but I also expect that iPod will continue to be very successful at the same time. The first generation of Zune may not blow everbody away, but that's okay. Better to start with a smaller but more loyal base and grow it incrementally over time.

The goal of Zune is not to replace existing iPods per se, but to dramatically go after the larger market of people who do not yet have personal digital media playors to grow a market much bigger than the current personal digital media player market.

Expect to see and hear a lot of Zune marketing in the coming days and weeks.

I do have to disclose that I am an employee of The Evil Empire (Microsoft). I am not part of the immediate Zune team, but I do work in the Entertainment and Devices Divsion which includes, among many other producst, both Zune and the Windows CE operating system and application software used for devices such as Windows Mobile smartphones and the various flavors of Pocket PC and embedded devices.

Go Zune go!

-- Jack Krupansky