4GB, 8GB Flash Zunes, 80GB HDD Zune on the Way?

Now you didn’t really think Microsoft sold “over a million Zunes” before the scheduled June 30, did ya?

The May 28 interview about Zune’s performance on the  market, that made waves and sent Microsoft’s shares sky-high, turned out to be… a misinterpretation (or rather, a bad transcript…). Zuneinsider.com reports that Robbie Bach’s correct sentence was: "When we finish our fiscal year in June we'll have sold a little over a million Zunes, so we feel very good about that." Well, considering Microsoft recent declaration that they have slightly missed their target of selling “a little more than 12 million Xbox 360s by June 30” (they’ve sold 11.6 million units to be exact), I can’t imagine how they achieved the “1 million Zunes” landmark in due time…

Anyway, the Redmond behemoth is pushing forward with its MP3 player brand, by readying new models, according to the aforementioned source. Apparently, the new Flash-based Zunes being crafted at Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division are code-named Draco (the first Zune was under the umbrella of the Argo project, but which is allegedly covering more than the simple MP3) and are meant to be a competitor for the iPod inside the iPhone. There will be a 4GB model and an 8 GB model, both of them sporting video playback capabilities and WiFi. As usual, inception on the market will happen sometimes around Christmas.

However, the most interesting part refers to a roomier Zune, with an 80GB hard drive. Code-named Scorpio, the spacey MP3 player which is currently in pre-production phase, is ready to enter mass-production at the end of this month. The 80GB Zune would be one of the most generous HDD-based MP3 players on the market, along with the 80GB iPod.