“Microsoft Corp. said Apple Computer Inc.’s best-selling iPod music player will face increased competition from new products in the end-of-year shopping season,” Ian King and Dina Bass report for Bloomberg News. “Microsoft is working with electronics makers including Royal Philips Electronics NV, Samsung Electronics Co. and Creative Technology Ltd. to design and test music players that rival iPod, said Erik Huggers, the head of Microsoft’s Digital Media Division.”
“‘Come this fall there is going to be a number of devices that get close to competing with Apple’s iPod,’ Huggers said in an interview in San Francisco yesterday,'” King and Bass report. “By the second quarter of next year ‘there is going to be a whole lineup of products that can compete with Apple in industrial design, usability, functionality and features.'”
“‘It’s going to take a lot to dethrone Apple,’ said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research in New York. ‘Apple won’t sit on its laurels and I expect we’ll see another iteration of the iPod for the holiday. Unless Microsoft is really willing to spend the time and effort to get behind a player or a select group of players, it’s not going to happen,'” King and Bass report.
King and Bass report, “Microsoft is helping electronics makers ‘build world-class devices, that really work well, with great industrial design, with lots of content available, with great software on the PC to make it all work together,’ Huggers said. While Apple’s iPod and iTunes music store work together easily, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has faced difficulty showing customers which of the many Windows-based players and music stores are compatible. A campaign called ‘PlaysForSure’ to put a logo on devices that would show consumers what works together, hasn’t helped because not all devices with the logo actually work with the promised services. ‘We tend to call it ‘PlaysForAlmostSure’,’ Gartenberg said. ‘Meanwhile Apple’s iPod and iTunes are dancing together like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.'”
Full article here.
We seem to recall that Microsoft said about the same thing last year. Last September, BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft was launching its most comprehensive foray yet into the digital media world. Portable video players, which run on Microsoft software and were made by Samsung Group and others, were supposed to be just a piece of the tech giant’s plan to steal Apple’s rock ‘n’ roll mojo.
BusinessWeek wrote at the time, “”The Colossus of Redmond is rolling out an update of its Windows Media Player audio and video software that’s designed to make it just as easy to purchase and manage music with Microsoft-powered gear as it is with Apple’s iPod and iTunes combo. ‘There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that,” Gates says. The new Windows Media software has mimicked iTunes, letting users buy in one click songs from MSN Music and a handful of other music retailers and have the tunes automatically added to music libraries.”
Oh, wow, we didn’t think you could do that, Bill. And we were right. See you around the same time next year.
Related articles:
Microsoft’s plan to steal Apple’s rock ‘n’ roll mojo faces rocky road – September 01, 2004
Study: 32 million U.S. adults plan to buy iPod in next 12 months – July 20, 2005
Needham & Co: Apple ‘iPod Halo Effect’ fueling Mac purchases; predict 43 million iPod sales in 2006 – July 18, 2005
Apple smashes street with record revenue, earnings; shipped 6.155 million iPods – July 13, 2005
So what is new? iPod Killers have been hyped since the iPod became a hit but no-one seems to learn from it. There must be so much money lost on WMA players by these companies who want to out-do Apple.
By the time MS and partners produce something … Apple will be ready to release their 6th gen iPod. Adding podcasting functionality to iTunes demonstrates now nimble Apple can be … the iPod/iTunes/ITMS is a moving target.
If any of the electronics giants were capable of inventing an “iPod killer,” surely one of them would have come up with something like the iPod long before a puny little computer company like Apple!
Also the PlaysForSure thing was just geeky and lame..
Get an iPod and you KNOW it will work..
Imagine if Apple had a tagline for Macs “LaunchesForSure”.. it just goes to show what kind of low standards MS has..
Oh My God the mp3 player actually DOES SOMETHING WHEN I PLUG IT INTO MY PC? WOW!
As for the actual article.. I’d be really interested to hear the guys from Samsung and Philips (who know their shit) taking advice from the MS Design Team
Pffft..
“The iPod is white, shiny and curvy.. “
Samsung “Your software is annoying and unpredictable”
MS “You make it curvy and shiny and we’ll handle the software, thank you very much!”
This is where MS takes advantage of Apple’s loss of the patent for the iPod GUI. Basically they and Creative will take the easy route and build a shell around it.
Frank.. they ‘lost’ that Patent because the actual UI was just taken from Creative..
Or are you talking about the Clickwheel
justified – They got it close enough that the general buying public could not care about the differences
Close enough has been part of the strategy MS employs
95 was close enough to the Mac OS of it’s day – ship it
XP was close enough to OS X of it’s day – ship it
MS never creates killer products on round 1. Usually round 3 or 4.
The XBox is one of those that they will endure years of losses to own the market.
This is one as well.
And, the general public might just swallow it IF the functions are close enough and the price is low enough. Unfortunately they’re not all terribly discerning and buy what ever crap is cheap. Walmart proves that out daily.
This is unfortunately like watching the “And who did you bring to the rumble” with Apple on one side all by itself and everyone else on the other … some only because Apple told them to get lost and “we don’t need no stinking help”
I just dont want to see Apple do so well just to piss it all away by being so damned stubborn and forcing possibly useful allies away. I’m sure Sony & Phillips would build great compatible players if Apple would let them.
Brought to you by the magic word present – as in the state of the present is not a good predictor of the future
One word:
F U D
The big problem for the Macintosh gaining market share is all the misconceptions about price, incompatibility, and lack of software. Very few people can effectively argue against OS X being the superior platform but they are playing catch-up.
The iPod, iTunes, ITMS Trifecta has the advantage of being the dominant platform AND being the best solution available AND being offered at very competitive prices. Trying to dethrone something that is dominant in Market Share AND better is a very difficult proposition.
MS can’t design great software, they’ve never been able to. What makes people think they’ll start now?
mike..i stand corrected..should have been the clickwheel. Thanx for pointing this out
They will make an MP3 player, that’s nice.
People don’t want an MP3 Player, they want an iPod.
MW: Reason, as in: This is the reason they will fail again.
“‘There’s nothing that the iPod does that I say: ‘Oh, wow, I don’t think we can do that,” Gates says”
Steve could walk over and hand Bill a blueprint for the next three generations of iPods and MS would still find a way to muck it up, make it ugly, make it unusable. Creating world class products is not in their corporate DNA. They just don’t get it.
With Microsoft trying to make 8 different services work with 71 different players (made by 14 different companies) Apple doesn’t have much to worry about.
Here in Oz I’ve noticed electronics stores have stopped advertising the iPod in their catalogues, plugging all their other digital music players instead. The iPod is obviously selling itself, and they need to offload the non-iPods.
blind leading the blind springs to mind
By the time M$ get their act together with an iPod killer (pure speculation, I might add!) everyone on the planet will own an iPod anyway and the whole exercise will have been a big waste of time and money.
Time to stoke the fire with some more hundred dollar bills…
I hear Kia is working on a competing car against BMW.
Hey, what gives MDN????
I thought creative was beleaguered???
Apparently, the “increasing pressure” that has been bombarding Apple’s iPod juggernaut will soon reach the point where Apple may actually notice it.
I mean really, I’ve told the neighbor kid that if he keeps poking my house with his finger, it will eventually fall over. And who’s gonna pay for that? His dad? I don’t think so!
Dear Microsoft,
You do not have a controlling marketshare in this market. If you did, you’d ruin the usability of MP3 players all over the world and force us all to use inferior software with inferior music players. So please go away and shut up and keep selling office and windows and leave it at that.
Sincerely,
The World
Well even if M$ and it’s homeboys come up with an iPod Killer, it won’t work with iTunes, and as far as I can see, the iTunes Shop is as much part of the draw for Apple as the iPod itself.
If a great product comes out of this bashing of heads, but still doesn’t work with the iTunes music shop, that will still put people off buying
I think the key fact here is that Microsoft is working with these manufacturers. That’s literally the kiss of death if there ever was one seeing as how they don’t have a single innovative thought in the entire company.
Yawn….
I love that they aim to “get close to competing” with the iPod
Good thing they aim high
LOL
MW = “think” as in I think they should aim higher