“Rumors persist about a Zune phone. I say it’s totally unlikely for a pretty simple reason. The business model of Windows Mobile is totally different than Zune,” Michael Gartenberg blogs or Jupiter Research.
“WinMo is a core platform and OS. No one has ever been successful licensing technology platforms to others and then competing with a device of their own,” Gartenberg explains.
“There’s certainly some likelihood of MSFT exploring a Zune phone but far more likely mobile Zune branded functions just get baked into a future version of Windows Mobile,” Gartenberg writes.
Full article here.
That’s all well and good, but how about the fact that Microsoft’s Zune also happens to be an abject failure?
Nobody buys Zunes. Nobody wants a Zune in their WinMo (retch) phone. For that matter, nobody wants a WinMo (blech) phone. We see no lines for such mobile telephony devices. None. Crickets.
Zune has done one thing: it has cemented “Microsoft” and “Mediocrity” together for an entire generation. Coinciding with the other abject failure, Windows Vista, Microsoft managed to shoot itself both feet at the same time. Stupid move. By stupid, incompetent leadership.
So stupid, in fact that we wouldn’t be surprised to see them launch a “Zune phone” on Monday along with a $500 million ad campaign designed to explain to you that people used to think the world was flat, so even though you and 10,000 reviewers tried it and found it to suck hard, you were wrong. Because Microsoft thinks they’re smarter than you. And because people used to think the world was flat, you made exactly the wrong choice by buying those iPods and now those iPhones and dumping Microsoft’s magnificent Windows for Macs in droves. So, any company that is planning on spending $500 million to tell each person on the planet 50 times per week that “Just like those flat-earthers back when, you’re just an ignorant fool and you’re stupid for not liking Vista,” is certainly capable of producing a fargin’ “Zune phone” at any moment.
Huh? Oh, yeah, shhh! (Sorry.) We mean: “May Ballmer run Microsoft for as long as it takes!”
Get your facts straight. You most certainly can give your old iPhone away to friends or sell it on craigslist. I did just that with my first-gen iPhone when I bought my 3G. You just pop out your SIM card, and the person you gave the phone to goes to an AT&T;store, signs up for service and gets their own SIM card. It’s just like any other phone in that regard.
Why would a battered women’s shelter want an iPhone? Wouldn’t people in those facilities prefer the pay-as-you-go Tracfone and Go phones and Boost phones you get from Wal-Mart?
It would be like giving a battered women’s shelter a blackberry. Sorry, there’s no pay-as-you-go, Where You At Dawg plan for the blackberry either.
Oh noes illegal aliens can’t buy an iPhone! How awful! Because you know how many illegal aliens are in the market for 3G smartphones.
Apple doesn’t compete with the $200 eMachine PC, and it doesn’t compete with the Tracfone from Wal-Mart. Get over it.
“We see no lines for such mobile telephony devices. None. Crickets.”
Microsoft sold 20 million Windows Mobile licenses while Apple sold 6 million iPhones. Of course, that’s “licenses,” so we don’t know how many of them are sitting on shelves…
I was actually at Microsoft last week. I couldn’t resist walking into their on-campus AT&T store and asking if they had any iPhones (they didn’t–if they had any, I’d’ve bought one right off just to say, “I bought my iPhone while at Microsoft!”). I was surprised that the store on campus didn’t even have a Big-Ass Table in it!
The iPhone has been available only in a small market up until a couple weeks ago. Now that it’s worldwide, I fully expect iPhone sales to pass Windows Mobile license sales.
“Oh and illegal aliens need not apply. You need Government approved I.D. to activate your iPhone.”
Gawd, that’s really a lame one. Poor dears should be exempt from our laws, eh? Give ’em drivers licenses too!
@thelonius: “Any other cell phone in the world, if you upgrade, you can give your old one away to charities or friends or whatever. With the iPhone you can’t do that.”
Yes you can. The only part that won’t work is the phone, which is just a small part of it, the rest is an iPod touch, with a mic as well. Cellphones are a stone age anachronism kept alive by the death-grip of the service providers and their hold on the infrastructure, which could otherwise be used much more efficiently.
@Peter
You were right there, where the magic happens. That is so cool! What’s it like?
Your potential. Our passion™
the iphone has had its fair shares of crap…
from software BUGs to build quality of the latest 3G!
this is my 4th iPhone 3G in one week…!
“Turds for sale! Get your turds here!!”
I find it hilarious that Microsoft has trashed the entire industry, with their terms.
For example, 4 years ago, the word “Vista” was seen in every apartment/home as a nice description. Come today, the word “Vista” is no where.
Likewise, the term “windows”. They use that rarely, often referring to the glass instead.
Thanks Micro$oft, we’re running out of good english adjectives
What do the analysts know Zune Thang? Nothing, but for once they and the public are making good use of their money by using it to buy iPods and iPhones.
So the ZunePhone will be a revolutionary, easy to use device that works where it counts: the enterprise? When Zune Thang. You have been spewing this will happen and that will happen and your so called predictions make an analyst look accurate.
It will be this it will be that, just wait. Well time’s up, we have been waiting.You said that bullshit about a year ago “around this time next year everyone will have forgotten the ipod and squirting into a Zune.” Well they aren’t Zune, the public got it from the start and even the analysts are getting the blatantly obvious. The only ones that don’t get it are MS and those with their heads stuck up so far MS’s asshole that they smell Ballmer’s farts before he does.
So from what I see in your reply to Peter, you are not from MS.
You kill me!
I’m still rolling on the floor over “where the magic happens”.
Absolutely hilarious!
Thanks!
I thought Ballmers memo to the troops was strange. Here they are out selling Apple by 30-1, yet, they have decided they need to be more Apple like.
Ballmer admitting that the 29 are lemmings and “afraid to change”, and that M$ need to get off its collective “arse” to mount a defense before they wake up. If I was a shareholder, I’d be selling in the face of this memo. The CEO who thinks there’s a boogey man behind every door. The Company who cannot co-exist with others and figure out a way to make money in a market it has to share with others. Just look at markets where they don’t dominate, truth is they lose money in each and every one. Why, their products are mediocre and rely on people buying them because that’s what everyone does.
Guess what, phones are personal, and people aren’t going to buy one because everyone else has one. The phones going to have to be good and satisfy multiple neds.M$ isn’t going to dominate phones, there are already too may other good providers out there and people aren’t going to be led around by their nose. This is guaranteed to be another money losing venture for M$.
Every forum has a troll it seems.
They sit in their bedrooms in their mother’s house goading total strangers with no useful or constructive ideas of any kind.
Poor sods.
Ignoring them is probably the most humane thing.
If Micro$haft squeezes out a Zune phone, it will give new meaning to the word “craptacular”.
Can’t wait for the Phune – LMAO.
>Come now or you will be late. As often as possible too!
Chrissy,
You sure have a way with words.
-jcr
lol mac luvers r funny
Now that the alien invasion is (officially declared as) imminent, you have to wonder what phones they’ll choose. Will His Steveness allow a special queue?
The new iPhone – made for 16.7 million shades of “grays.”
Hey, don’t put down the Zune!!!
in just 12 months, Microsoft sold 1,000,000 of them.
Then in just 11 months, Microsoft sold 1,000,000 more. See. They are just flying out of the factory into warehouses everywhere.
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Of course, it did help that many of those second million sold were super super discounted Zune 1s, but hey, a number is a number. 🙁
Just a — sad— thought.
en
zunes are nice
try to pick a 80gb zune and then try an ipod i own bouth zune has a touch pad aswell as a kilckey thingy apple locks down on all there products
ever try to put itunes music on you phone? o wait you cant can you up grade the graphis card in the new imac nooooooooooo you have to bring it to the apple store apple is just a nother control freaak comeny and in the zune phone (if there is one) you probally will be able to chang the battery.
Please tell me that was a joke!