Who’s Zune-ing who?
(Apologies to Aretha Franklin. And apologies to my high school English teacher who would insisted that it’s “Who’s Zune-ing whom,” but then, he would have preferred to listen to “You aren’t anything but a hound dog” and “I can’t get any satisfaction,” so what can you do. But I digress.)
Zunewatch 2007 update, no Zunes sighted, despite Microsoft claiming to have sold a million of them. Interesting, Apple sold nearly a half a million iPhones in a weekend, and I’ve already spotted two iPhones “in the wild.”
About those one million Zunes… there’s rumor that Microsoft is planning a version 2.0 for the holiday season. Why this is only a rumor, I don’t know, one would certainly expect a technology refresh fairly soon. The original Zune is going to be year old before we know it, and that makes practically well into advanced middle age in consumer electronics, with “End of Life” breathing down its product cycle neck. With the back to school nearly here and the holidays not far behind, there better be a Zune 2.0 coming, and better be compelling if there is hope of getting those first million, happy, Zune purchasers to upgrade.
Except there’s a bit of a snag… those one million happy Zune purchasers? Seven out of ten of them aren’t. Happy, that is, with their Zune purchase, and according to recent survey, intend to purchase an iPod or an iPhone. Which would explain why Zunewatch hasn’t gone so well. Zune owners leave them at home.
Maybe Microsoft is hoping for the “3.0″ effect to work here… that was the theory in the 90s, anyway. It takes Microsft three tries to get anything right, but once they do, they’ll take over the market. In the heydey, Microsoft just had to float a rumor that they were thinking of getting into a market to claim the turf from smaller players.
And there are other players out there besides Zune and iPod. And that’s good. No player, or company, and can or should be all things to all people. Here’s a couple non-Apple, non-MS music players that are pretty cool:
One annoyance of the MP3 player is the headphone cords. MP3 chips are small enough now that you can fit the whole thing in the headphones themselves… a neat feature seen in this pair of headphones.
I like the idea of the whole thing being contained in the headphones and avoiding the spaghetti wire hanging down, waiting to catch on something. I can see using or having this for workouts and other activities with a high risk dropping or breaking where it might be unnerving to have my 80 gig video iPod out, getting banged or dripped with sweat. I don’t like the 128 meg size of the memory, room enough for maybe 30-40 songs, tops, and the price, even reduced now to $109 is a bit high.
At the high end, with a twist, is this player from Korea with built-in speakers. Sometimes, say when travelling, or in the office, you want to listen without headphones, or even share a track or cut with more than one person, and you don’t have a speaker to plug into. This Samsung has a small speaker, and sleek faceplate as well for that added cool factor.
One final offering is a Sandisk model designed for kids. This is an underserved demographic, though I’ve certainly seen more than one classmate of my gradeschool geeklings with white earbuds after Christmas break. The iPod shuffle is a great choice for some kids, but others, especially younge ones, still might not get the idea and tiny buttons.
The Shake MP3 also has a speaker, loads songs on SD cards, and you can set it up so that you can change the song by shaking it, hence the name. Finally, an MP3 player for two-year olds…. and up, of course.
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