Zune pronounced dead

July 24th, 2007

Not quite but this survey comes close. 70% of the people who bought a Zune would switch to an iPod or iPhone and 36% regret ever buying the device. Of those who’d keep the ‘device’ 22% were motivated by their dislike of apple. That mean 6% of Zune marketshare is down to people not liking something else!. To put that into perspective 6% of iPods is more than to totality of Zunes ever sold.
I wonder sometimes about how MS get into these situations? It can’t be because they can’t attract the talent – they can pay for it and have shown no compunction in spending their way into a market. Why is it that Apple release constant wonder in their iPods (and now the iPhone) while microsoft knowing full well the eyes of the world will be on them actually release a brown Zune?
The only explanation I can think of is institutional. The managers are incapable of taking control of anything – it’s all design by comittee and that always ends up in the lowest common denominator. The software at release was abysmal – the only way you deliberately let something like that out is to try and meet a ship date – not a commitment to quality.

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