Metro lists and explains “10 Reasons Why the Microsoft Portable Music Player Will Fail” for Metroxing:
10. A look at the rumored features of WiFi, community, and trading your AAC tracks for WMA tracks
9. MS has failed in every consumer venture since 1998: “Xbox/360? When you spend $400 to sell every unit, how many more ‘successes’ can you afford?”
8. Information is already leaking like a sieve
7. It will antagonize MS’ many partners – they will fight tooth and nail to hold MS at bay
6. MS’ “marketing prowess” is a myth
5. MS’ real reputation: MS is the kludgy company with the not-quite working things with unattractive-looking products
4. They don’t really understand consumers
3. Clueless arrogance + bureaucratic culture ≠ success
2. MS’ bad design
1. MS has already failed
Full article, with explanations of each point on the list above, here.
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I love top 10 lists
Remember people, this whole Microsoft Wi-Fi iPod killer is a RUMOR and only a RUMOR.
MS have denied any validity to these rumors.
Maybe they’ve finally learned something from Apple? Deny the rumors, let the hype flow, misdirect the competition, and then drop the product bomb. Unfortunately, for Microsoft, the product will actual bomb, since this strategy actually requires more innovation than a photocopier can reproduce.
MS has failed in every consumer venture since 1998
Hmm… wasn’t the Xbox a pretty major success?
#1 reason: it’s not an iPod.
Allen, if you go back and look at the rumors, Microsoft’s denial, and then what they actually release, they usually are 90%+ right on the money.
“Hmm… wasn’t the Xbox a pretty major success?”
If selling your product at a loss is a success, I guess so. I guess they consider that a winning strategy these days; we’ll buy your iTunes tracks at a loss. In the end, it only works IF you create a monoply.
The Xbox and cell phone tie in is a serious threat. Apple should not be resting on its laurels.
You have it all wrong MDN.
There will be so many delays they figure I’ll have retired by the time it hits the market, and by then people will buy aything!
Bozos
S.
As much as I despise Microsoft, it is a formidable competitor. The Xbox is a tremendous success despite the fact that it was not profitable. Microsoft has so much cash, it can afford to lose money to enter a market and steal market share from the major game box makers. And that is exactly what they did. MS is now #2 in the gaming market and with the continued set backs by Sony, MS may well take over the #1 spot. Most hardcore gamers I talk to think the Xbox system is superior to the Play station systems. I would not know as I play very few games. But Apple should not be too smug thinking that MS has no chance in the music arena.
X-Box is only a success in America, for the most part. Japan has had it’s issues with Microsoft before including an anti-trust lawsuit. The reason X-Box isn’t popular over there is because most of the games you can get on it are either already on a Sony or Nintendo console (both Japanese companies), or don’t appeal to the Japanese gamer. Microsoft isn’t a good listener to the consumer. Sony and Nintendo have been there for years so they can identify with the mindset. The X-Box controller is kludgy, bulky, awkward. That’s why I would consider the X-Box a failure.
If “MS’ “marketing prowess” is a myth”, then isn’t the fact that there is a myth at all a marketing success?
You have much to learn young capitalist.
1. If a product or service loses money with no sign of every turning a profit – it could be the most popular widget on the planet, but that does not make it a success.
Well, it does make it a success perhaps in the consumer or business world, but that’s not what shareholders care about, they care about making bank, period.
2. Xbox fits this mold to a tee. In only one quarter has the xBox division turned a profit. M$’s only goal is to outlast its competition, and eventually dominate. If M$ cannot dominate in the 80%+ range, it’s models loses, and they are losing quite often outside of OS and Office sales.
3. This is not the Apple of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Steve Jobs and crew run the show, and the gloves will be coming off this fall, with Apple brining it’s latest smash to M$ in portable entertainment, and will build upon this success with Leopard in early ’07.
~Steven
According to the MiniMSFT blog, Microsoft isn’t planning to buy WMA tracks to replace your iTunes tracks.
Leaving aside things like the beauty of the click-wheel interface and the seamless integration with the iTMS (things that Microsoft, if they actually innovated for a change and maybe got some new people in – could actually manage), the one thing that Microsoft will never (or a least is very unlikely) to do is to match Apple’s marketing success with the iPod.
Marketing is not an exact science, it’s as much luck as design. I’m not saying that Apple was lucky in the success of marketing the iPod, it’s just that marketing in itself has a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time, with just the right marketing mix, aimed at the right people.
Apple scored hit after hit here and got everything right, and it’s something that even if Microsoft had a top agency with a great marketing campaign they would still need to be lucky to get the same market penetration as the iPod.
Plus the fact that they now have a major competitor – Apple.
Heck, it shows how difficult marketing is because Apple hasn’t simply repeated what they did with the iPod for the Mac. If Apple finds it difficult, Microsoft hasn’t a hope.
The #1 reason should be ” because consumers despise and distrust Microsoft.”
Microsoft should just buy Creative (or the company that makes iRiver players whatever its called). Then buy one of the also-ran online digital media stores. Then create a new subsidiary for media distribution and media players, but don’t call it “Microsoft” or “Windows” anything. Think of a new name.
Microsoft isn’t going to trade AAC for WMA, it would cost billions and they are already mounting a several million dollar a day fine from the EU.
Even M$ can’t afford to leak money like that.
No Bill Gates is finished, he’s the richest guy/geek/nerd in the world, Steve Jobs is his buddy and Gates is going to allow Apple to take over the computing world.
It’s just the transition has to take time.
1: Ballmer is going around trimming employees
2: Top employees are leaving for Google and other places
3: M$ is just stagnating
4: Dell is dying, HP is just hanging on, Gateway is nearly dead. IBM left town.
A: Apple is growing, building stores all over the world.
B: Hooked up with Intel, the worlds largest chip maker
C: Has X-Code and Mac OS X running on every major processor Intel, PPC (including Cell)
We are going to see Apple breakout and really do some wild things to move more boxes.
MDN Word: “Short” Microsoft is on the short bus careening off a short pier.
Run and hide. Apple is terrified at Microsoft and realizes that ones this new MP3 player comes out it will be the end of the iPod. Who wants an overpriced piece of plastic with exploding batteries and melting displays when they can get a top of the line player sold by the most experienced developers on the planet? It will be fully compatible with 99% of the real computers (Macs are only expensive toys unless used exclusively for graphics) and as such everyone will buy them.
Apple is already trying to stop this by giving away iPods but it isn’t going to work. Giving away a piece of crap isn’t going to stop the loss of every customer to Microsoft. It will be fun to watch Apple get out of the computer industry and get crushed by Microsoft. Time to short Apple stock!
How the “Microsoft iPod” Might Succeed
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17145&ch=infotech
“Run and hide.”
LOL!
I hope Microsoft does bring out its own MP3 player.
More competition is better for us Apple consumers.
And don’t forget about the failed Micro$oft store they had once at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco. I went in there once and it was as busy as a graveyard. It opened in June 1999 and closed down in 2001.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050831-5264.html
Microsoft is undoubtedly desperate to retain the myth of its invincibility and dominance by competing well with Apple’s iPod, but without a well-established and integrated distribution system like iTunes, it seems unlikely that even a technologically satisfactory device would make a significant impact. It is unlikely that Microsoft would ever design a device that would integrate with iTunes. Microsoft is too prideful and conceited to acquiesce to Apple. Microsoft will publicly belittle the iPod as a popular niche product while seething internally for not being able to match the iPod’s successes.
Microsoft’s Origami was peddled to be an iPod killer. However, once a demonstration model was released, Origami was criticized for being too expensive, too underpowered, and too large to be a real competitor to the iPod. Similarly, Vista has been hawked as an alternative to OS X. It is obvious that not only will Vista be released later rather than sooner, Vista is also overvalued, overrated, devoid of many promised features, and bloated beyond comprehension. Microsoft’s has quietly admitted that Office is behind schedule and will be delayed. For years, Microsoft has struggled to produce anything of real significance and on time.
Relying on its horde of cash to finance losses due to poor design and hasty development of inadequate products is not a sustainable business decision for the long term. Why else have rumblings of discontent been heard in Redmond and why else has Gates been “graciously” shown the door? The real reasons for Microsoft’s lapse in substantial product development are located in the corner offices. Every failure, blunder, and delay is just a symptom of the myopic thinking and poor decisions of Microsoft’s imperious suits. It makes one wonder, how can so many people be so stupid simultaneously?
I think that for the next few years Microsoft will loudly and repeatedly proclaim that its primary mission is to design software for the PC and downplay any rumors of company resources being devoted to “killing” iPods or any other Apple product. Microsoft will whine and whimper, lick its tender and purulent wounds, and pray that Gate’s departure and subsequent restructuring reinvigorate the company as Apple and other companies surge ahead to capture more market share and consumer enthusiasm.
gambit, i wasnt aware that ms ever had a store.
but from what you say, i guess the demand for cheesy keyboards and mice, and over-priced under featured OS’s just isn’t that much of a crowd puller.
how surprising. i could really see people on their weekends. ‘ hey guys let’s check out that cool microsoft store with all those wickedly cool XP boxes and third party anti-virus software stacked up next to those futuristic beige pc’s. mmm uh huh.
Microsoft Apologist:
If designing, developing, and marketing the MicroPod is so simple and intuitive, why has it taken Microsoft five years to produce….nothing? Microsoft trumpets its talents in imagining the incredible and the spectacular, and telling everyone what great ideas it has. However, Microsoft simply fails miserably in making something useful a physical reality.