“We’ve just received a sound tip that Microsoft is working on its very own phone to be branded under the Zune moniker. Our tipsters inform us that Microsoft execs are in meetings today hammering out details of the device and developing strategies and timescales for its release,” Blake Robinson reports for CrunchGear.
“It will be a smartphone that works homogeneously with the Zune marketplace. It will most likely not, however, run Windows Mobile. Rather it’ll make use of an interface similar to the current Zune,” Robinson reports. “The other detail that seems certain at this point is that the device will, if things go as planned, be available for the ‘07 holiday season.”
Full article here.
Yeah, you know, because the Zune was so successful and the Zune brand is so widely respected. We think we heard Steve Jobs’ laughter about Microsoft’s weak attempt to freeze the market with their usual vapor from across the continent. In other words, Microsoft talks about their so-called plans for the future as if they think people will hold off on other phones so they can get their very own brown Zune Phone. Microsoft: operating as if this is 1993 instead of 2007. Note to Microsoft: people are more knowledgeable today and they aren’t impressed with your products; see related article: PC World writer’s advice for Microsoft: ‘Stop making crap’ – July 27, 2006
A related CrunchGear article from Monday reports, “Over the weekend we stopped by our local overstock and discount store in Seattle and were shocked—shocked!—to find a stack of nearly a dozen brand-new, unopened Zunes selling at $168.” Full article, “Zune Goes Discount, Contributes to $289 Million Loss for Microsoft,” here.
Related articles:
Buh-bye: Senior Zune exec exits Microsoft – January 31, 2007
Report: Microsoft Zune screens cracking from overheating battery pressure – January 31, 2007
Last quarter: Microsoft lost $289 million on Zune, CE devices – January 26, 2007
RealMoney’s Comeau predicts: ‘Microsoft will kill the first Zune media player by midyear’ – December 16, 2006
Desperation time? Microsoft Zune already being discounted by retailers – December 13, 2006
Microsoft Zune plummets to 5th place in U.S. digital media player market share with 2.1 percent – December 04, 2006
Analysts: Microsoft needs to ‘rethink’ as interest in Zune fades fast – December 01, 2006
Microsoft’s Steve Jobs-wannabe J Allard has 9 iPods and uses an Apple Mac – November 28, 2006
TheStreet.com: It’s not looking good for Microsoft’s Zune; bad press may taint brand for years – November 24, 2006
Amazon’s bestselling MP3 players list chronicles Microsoft Zune dud – November 20, 2006
Apple files US patent application relating to iPhone/iTunes Store wireless transactions – February 01, 2007
O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile battle for exclusive rights to Apple iPhone in UK – January 26, 2007
Rogers to offer Apple iPhone exclusively in Canada – January 25, 2007
Research in Motion downgraded due to Apple iPhone competition – January 23, 2007
RealMoney: Apple just blew up the whole damn mobile-phone supply chain with its new iPhone – January 11, 2007
eWeek: Apple iPhone fallout: ‘They must be crying in Nokia-ville and other telephony towns today’ – January 10, 2007
Jefferies downgrades Motorola on fears of market share loss to Apple iPhone – January 10, 2007
The massive FUD campaign against Apple’s iPhone ramps up – January 10, 2007
Time: ‘iPhone could crush cell phone market pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority’ – January 09, 2007
Analyst: Apple iPhone should be given its own category – ‘brilliantphone’ – January 09, 2007
Apple debuts iPhone: touchscreen mobile phone + widescreen iPod + Internet communicator – January 09, 2007
UH OH!
Is Windows Mobile (or is it CE?) the next playsforsure vistim?
It will be a re-badge, re-package of some existing Korean phone under the BS Zune bad brand name. So much for “innovation”!
I thought this was the Zune phone! The little boy is showing how to place a call:
Remember when Microsoft’s marketing FUD meant something?
They already have phones. They are essentially failures.
So they are going to shoehorn a failure (phones) into a newer failure (Zune)? Won’t that create some kind of failure in the space-time continuum? A massive failure vortex that sucks everything cool out of the Universe and leaves nothing but kludge?
As night follows day….
Now they have something to copy.
Now MS will stab all it’s Windows Mobile partners in the back.
Imagine a Zune phone squirting in your ear!
Here is MS business plan: “Our business plan is to follow Apple into any and all markets. Period. Let them take the original risk. If they fumble, then we’re close to pick up the ball and run with it.”.
Which is why Jobs didn’t reveal all about Leopard of course.
As soon as Microsoft see what they have to copy they set about doing it..
I hope those unscrupulous creeps spend a long time in the fires of hell.. (no billions of $’s will get them out of there either).
Okay, okay. Let me get this straight.
There’ll be a Zune Phone. It will not use Windows Mobile, so they will somehow modify the operating system currently used by the Zune. And it will be available in time for Christmas of this year–in about 10 months time.
And I believe this…why?!
168$
Woah. Guess they’re not in the high end market anymore… er.. so their “feel good” marketshare (ism) is down.. drat.
@iSteve
I was just wondering that nyself.
Microsoft appear to be in complete chaos right now. Gates has announced his resignation, squirmed his way through interviews after a very lacklustre launch of the results of 5 years of development…
Zune Tang, are you listening? You can quote me on this in 12 months time…
I predict that Microsoft will miss their quarterly profit targets for each of the next four quarters. Gates will leave early, Ballmer will retire and the bad news will continue until MS announce their first quarterly loss. Huge restructuring costs will follow and MS will thrash about in the market for some time before major surgery will see loss-making divisions closed or sold off.
In my 30 years in the IT industry I have seen great names come and go…
Burroughs
Sperry Univac
Wang Labs
Lotus
WordPerfect
Novell
Digital
Compaq
Amdahl
ICL
Fujitsu
Tandem
Concurrent
…
And remember IBM used to be the Microsoft of the industry at one stage…
The Microsoft era is over. Those of us who are not Microsoft fanboys are going to find the death throes of Microsoft very amusing. They have a lot of money so it will take quite a long time. But the strategy of following the innovators or buying market leading solutions is not delivering sufficient growth. Vista is not going to turn that around, nor is Zune, and nor is a Zune phone…
You gotta admit, its a fun time to be an apple fanboy
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Why?
Also, I wonder if it will have a keyboard?
Ballmer is just full of Zune.
When it gets down to about $100, it will be worth buying to take apart for the 30GB mini hard drive.
And to add to SydneyStephen’s list…
Data General – DEC’s baby brother
Cullinet – the hot database of the Eighties, before Oracle
NCR
Control Data
Honeywell – the remaining members of BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell)
Any company that lasts over 20 years in this business is doing damn well, so IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and Apple should all be congratulated just for still being alive.
However, the history of IT tends to indicate that companies that adhere to proprietary technologies tend to suffer over the long-term as customers develop a mature attitude to purchasing and seek to avoid lock-in. If you want evidence, look at…
• IBM before it embraced Unix: Stephen and I obviously will remember SNA, System/36 and all of the other stuff that nearly killed Big Blue.
• Apple before the return of Jobs: NuBus (a technology that nearly everyone else avoided no matter how good it was), ADB, LocalTalk and AppleTalk not mention all the OS versions prior to OS X.
• DEC and Data General: what did for the go-go twins of Massachusetts was the fact that – as the PC revolution took hold – nobody wanted to pay for proprietary mid-sized iron (VAX and MV respectively) that, no matter how technically efficient or fast, was simply not competitive when compared to building large farms of systems based on Windows, Novell or Unix.
Microsoft has to be careful that its control freak tendencies that seek to lock everyone into XP (now Vista) and Windows Server through proprietary technologies – such as WMA, Active Directory, WINS, ActiveX, .NET, etc. – don’t ultimately lead to its demise. Personally, I think the rot has already set in and we’re about to start witnessing the Fall of the Roman Empire.
First, SydneyStephen doesn’t get it. Perhaps a little too much shrimp on the barbie, mate! Microsoft won, Apple lost. Game over. Nobody wants Cupertino’s half-baked copies of Redmond’s masterpieces. The market has spoken.
Second, my prayers have been answered. The Zune phone will truly demonstrate what a ho-hum piece of garbage Apple’s iPhone is. I’m saving my points already. The IT guys I work with are stoked too! The Zune won’t be a smart phone—it will be a genius phone! Imagine: Windows Live, Outlook compatibility, Zune Marketplace, WMA and WMV compatibility in the palm of my hand. Cool!
Microsoft is making the whole widget here. Their brilliant ability to innovate top-notch, customer-focused solutions as well as cultivate friendly industry partnerships will serve them well. Wireless phone companies probably can’t wait to rub shoulders with the geniuses in Redmond.
And you thought the social with the version 1 Zune was awesome, wait ’til you see the Zune phone. The only thing I might disagree with is the omission of Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile rocks! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it Microsoft!
Welcome to the Social.
Shocked that Zune was in an overstocked store, why? It’s a piece of crap so I’m not surprised one bit and it looks like know one is buying it at that discount price either.
They say by December 2007 so you know it’s going to be a piece of crap like the Zune. Apple took over two years to develop the iPhone and Microsoft thinks it can crank out something better in less than 10 months? Ha!
I don’t think I would want to buy a phone that blue screens when I try to call someone.
They were just waiting to see what Apple came up with so they would know what to copy.
@Mondale
Thanks for filling in the gaps. We used to call them Snow White and the seven dwarfs:
IBM
1. Honeywell
2. NCR
3. Burroughs
4. Sperry
5. Control Data
6. Univac
7. ICL
… well not sure about ICL. But of all of those, only IBM remains in its original form. Burroughs/Sperry/Univac are now Unisys. Fujitsu bought ICL, NCR withdrew to the POS/ATM market, Honeywell only do building control stuff and services and Control Data disappeared somewhere…
I am not sure that SNA and S/36 were the problem for IBM. S/36 was pretty successful. But the PC turned everything on its head, and IBM went their own way with OS/2 and Lotus and found themselves in a commodity market competing with Dell and others. IBM now makes the majority of their income from services instead of hardware.
But I agree that we are witnessing the first signs of the fall of Microsoft. Vista is, by any measure, a disaster. 5 years in the making and nothing to say for itself. XP with lipstick perhaps, but really DOS with lipstick and eyeshadow and facepowder and mascara… They appear to have lost their way.
There is something else to note here: Corporate users are fed up with the instability and insecurity of windows desktop operating systems. Citrix is well entrenched in many organisations, with thin screens prevalent in many organisations. This is a major threat to Windows desktop sales and must be worrying MS and the hardware vendors. If MS lose the hearts and minds of the general public (i think they already have) and Apple entrench themselves in this market, i see a return to “minicomputer” style architectures with servers running opensource applications, accesible through browsers. Thin clients running a browser will deliver the same functionality as a corporate desktop, with no maintenance, lower cost, and next to no risk of worm/virus infiltration.
Wang/Digital/Data General/IBM midrange minicomputers were much easier to deploy and manage – the downside was proprietary lock-in.
But envisage applications developed in something like ruby on rails (so platform independent) running on centralised servers, with browser access – all the advantages of minicomputers, but open architecture. This has to be attractive to corporates…
I hope it comes with lots of buttons, that’s all I will say on the matter!
@Zune Tang
You crack me up.
“Microsoft won, Apple lost. Game over”
I think Bill and Steve Ballmer would have agreed with you a little while ago. Michael Dell too. Though he has other problems opn his plate right now. The game is not over until the fat man farts. And if you look closely at Ballmer in recent pics, you will see his face is red. It is because he is desperately holding his arse-cheeks together…
Microsoft have pursued a similar strategy for some time now, and it has consistently failed to produce results:
Internet Explorer: They killed Netscape by giving IE away. But MS have been unable to generate any revenue from IE, and of course it must be costing lots of $$ to keep up with the new generation browsers. IE marketshare has been steadily eroding and one has to ask “what was the point?”. I predict IE will either be dropped altogether or, after the big shakeup which i predict will come this calendar year, MS will unbundle IE from the O/S and start charging for it.
Hotmail: Remember when MS started to charge extra for storage space? They do enjoy some revenue from ads I guess – but the acquisition costs must have been high, and there is fierce competition out there.
CRM: Late to the market and a disastrous first release, CRM seems to have stalled.
Financials: Great Plains and Navision purchased at considerable expense but seemingly not delivering much in the way of incremental revenue, despite considerable investment in product development and integration.
Office: The flagship of the company, but under threat from web-based editors and hugely over-featured. I predict Office will largely disappear from the home market. In the commercial environment, Office will be relegated to power users – with casual word processing and spreadsheeting migrating to open source browser-based tools.
Windows Everywhere: Well, not much sign of this – and Windows is struggling to find market acceptance in most of the markets targeted by MS. Phones, cars, appliances… Phones perhaps – but now MS appear to be abandoning that strategy too in favour of a modified Zune O/S if we can believe the rumour posted here today.
xBox: Is PS/2 is still outselling xBox? How will MS ever make money out of this? PS/3 will eventually come down in price as Blu-ray production problems are ironed out – and Sony have done well in other areas of their business (electronics and movies are doing well) so they can afford to be patient and get it right. In 12 months time, with PS/3 prices down and lots of new games, PS/3 can be expected to come into its own. MS will have to answer this eventually with a new xBox – but they are behind the market and any new MX machine will suffer from a shortage of new games at launch and this will just perpetuate the problem.
Zune: Well, this will go down in history as the biggest MS flop of all time. MS will pour money into Zune for the rest of the year, but the knives will be out by the fall and Zune will sink without a trace. The MS Zune phone will never appear.
Vista: 5 years. 5 years. 5 years. 5 years. One day we will find out why Vista took 5 years to develop. What were all those programmers doing? 5 years!!!!!! 5 years!!!!! Vista won’t be dropped, but it will be regarded as the deathknell for MS. 5 years of development for so little gain – you can see from the press that people are really SHOCKED. The market is going to be spooked by this, and it makes it look like Gates is leaving a sinking ship.
You know, if I were Ballmer, I think I would close the company and give the money back to the shareholders. Soon – while there is still some money left to give back to the shareholders.
@zt “Microsoft is making the whole widget here.” – I thought it was ‘gadget’. Slip up there? ZT, a Widget is what Apple calls them. A gadget is what Micropuke calls it. Get your OS’s straight son. The funny thing, the joke of the rotary phone at the keynote is probably what MS is going to do…. Let me guess….it will be called the Zone. lol.
Apple took eight months to develop the iPod and five years later, Microsoft brought out the Zune.
With the iPhone, Apple took 30 months to develop it and Microsoft are expecting to develop their zPhone in about ten months.
It just doesn’t sound like they’ve thought it through before shooting their mouth off.
It’s quite amusing watching all the Macheads go apeshit over bullshit on MDN (Microsoft Daily News).
Too bad the world of Apple is so unexciting that all there is to gossip about is Microsoft!
Poor Fracks…….
A Zune phone? That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day!
What do you get when you cross a turd with a telephone?
The Zune phone!
Micro$oft should advertise on the Comedy Channel.
The phone should be as big a laugh as the Zune was.