“Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday that it is ‘not unreasonable’ for the company to introduce a mobile phone combined with features of its Zune digital music player to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPhone,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for Reuters.
“The Zune phone, a topic of speculation for months since Microsoft introduced its first digital music player last year, could be driven by consumer demand for one multimedia device to make phone calls, play music and take pictures,” Wakabayashi reports.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve said it before, so we’ll say it again: Microsoft’s Zune is the WNBA of the digital media device world.*
Wakabayashi continues, “‘It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think at some point there might some integrated thing,’ Mindy Mount, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, told investors at Citigroup’s global technology conference.”
MacDailyNews Take: Not unreasonable? Hell, we can guarantee that if they do it, it will be some “thing” – integrated in assbackwards fashion, as usual. That’s a foregone conclusion based upon decades of crap products from Microsoft. Forget some integrated phone thing, the Zune itself is “unreasonable.” It was years too late, offered way too little, and it was fecal brown. It’s a re-badged joke that any other company would have already killed if they were even stupid enough proceed with the launch in the first place.
Wakabayashi continues, “Microsoft has sent mixed signals about the Zune phone. At the time it introduced the Zune last year, the company said a Zune phone was definitely part of its future plans. Earlier this year, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said at a CEO forum that the Zune phone is not a concept that Microsoft would ever pursue.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bottom line: Microsoft has no idea what they’re doing. Who’s surprised?
*Boring mediocrity that real people couldn’t care less about propped up by vastly larger organizations with agendas unrelated to the product itself. Ginned-up “interest” cannot sustain failure for long.
The only unreasonable thing here is the expectation for such a device to succeed.
@Danno Bonano – Thanks for posting Thurott’s asinine drivel; I am always amused and curious about his transparent shill-blains but I don’t want to give him any hits.
Steve Ballmer is a skin mite. He lives and feeds upon the body of Microsoft. When he has on occasion caught a glimpse of the greater body he is moved to skip and prance within a defined enclosure. When he’s not being a skin mite he’s a moth flying around the bright light of Apples front porch …a mesmerized, bothersome moth …and when he’s not being a moth he’s a man ..a strange and perplexed man with bullish brow and schizophrenic smile who exhausts himself before his time is up and it’s time once more to be a mite.
I really hope Micro$haft does make a Zune Phone. I laughed for weeks when I first saw the Zune; I’m sure the phone will have me ROTFLMAO for months!!!!!!
Thomas, no worries….when I read it I went a little APE $H)T.
I was expecting crap but even this amazed me. Thurott is like Dvorak. It’s amusing to read how stupid they are but they can amaze you still.
Mindy Mount…
Sounds like a porn star name.
MW: Act. To be a porn star, you do not have to act well.
Here’s a preliminary ad for the ZunePhone:
LOL! That vid is great!
Gates should stick to giving money away. Its the only worthwhile thing he is capable of.
you know what’s fscked up? thurott writes for a website (windowsitpro.com) that is owned by a client of ours. i don’t know that i can email him and tell him what a fsckwad he is because of that. damn, this sucks…
MDN: price, as in ‘the price i have to pay.’
Microsoft needs to follow Palm and axe off a loser product before it launches……
The Phune… BRILLIANT lessisMore! I almost choked.
The Phune will just be another bottomless pit that Microsoft pours money down. Why on earth don’t MS shareholders revolt?
I wish MDN would save your takes until the end of the article. It’s annoying when I’m trying to read something and to have it continually interrupted by your views. While your takes are almost always spot on, I would like to finish reading the article and form my own take before I read yours.
Microsoft knows what we really want to do with touch screens, oh boy:
I asked on of my class of 20 year olds if they knew about Microsoft’s mp3 player. They looked at me with blank faces. One asked whether if was the same of an ipod? What could I say…not really was my reply.
Then they asked what it was called (and then the comedy time started). “Zune” was my reply. Well you get the idea. I then finished with the choice of brown as one of Microsoft’s excellent choices. Lord knows what a Microsoft phone would be like; something like Vista?
“Not unreasonable” does not equal reasonable.
Who will Microsoft hire to re-badge an existing smartphone into the Zune Phone? Samsung, LG, Motorola…
@Danno Bonano
Calm down – no need to re-write the whole article here. The link will do.
I know MS are a stupid company, but bringing out a zune phone would be even stupider.
Windows Mobile phones are media players + phones, so wouldn’t this mean they are admitting that the windows mobile product line is crap / not worthy to compete against iPhone?
“Mindy Mount, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division”
I saw her in “Mindy Mounts Monty” an “Mindy’s Mounties”. Quite and athlete, that one.
I think thats a great video, My guess is when you hit the windows button at the bottom you get the good old screen of death?
I tried to order one of Mindy’s movies (“Driving Up Miss Daisy”) but they were in HD-DVD only. <chicka-chicka-ohno>
Oh, please, please produce a Zune phone.
I’ve just stopped laughing over the Zune itself, and we could all use some fresh Zune jokes.
To MS and all of it’s loyal consumers:
ENOUGH. Microsoft was once a mighty company but now is only a shell of its former self. It is a failure as is everything that it produces. It is now time for MS to go the way of the dinosaur. Just a remnant best suited for museums.
“there might [be] some integrated thing”
Was Mindy Mount lifted from pubic relations?
Before I think about buying any M$ hardware product I turn on my XBOX 360 and 3/4 red circle glow.
I am literally stuck with a two piece (unit and power supply) doorstop.
The only reason the Zune’s could sell is if they their quality is really bad and they are “hard wired” for exchange server. Then IT people, morons, sorry I repeat myself, will force executives to carry the brown devices and they will because, they will be so unreliable that nobody will be able to tell if that emergency 4 AM board meeting notice made it to everyone. Hence providing executives with plausible deniability. Which is why M$ products sells so much in the first place….the unreliability is a feature.
Just my $0.02