What, you thought the Zune brand was dead? No way, Jose!
Yes, the Zune did sell more than 1 million units by now (1.4 actually if we were to believe the latest estimates) and no, it’s not nice to laugh at someone’s “welcome to the social” slogan…
Ok, I need you to be really focused now so take a deep breath: according to Cesar Mendez, an employee working at Microsoft for the Zune department, the suggested retail price for the Wi-Fi-enabled MP3 player crafted at Redmond has been reduced to $199, from the original $249. The announcement was made on September 4, a day before Apple’s mysterious press event inside the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the Cupertino, CA-based behemoth is expected to unveil its new line of iPods.
“Some of you may have already heard, but tomorrow we’re dropping the suggested retail price for Zune to $199. It’s part of the normal product lifecycle, something we’ve had on the books for months. We just got some research back and customer satisfaction with the 30GB device is really high (around 94%) and we expect even more consumers will now want to discover the Zune experience at the new lower price,” said Mendez.
Hm…This calls for a moment of silence… The high consumer satisfaction rate Mendez talked about seems to be in flagrant contradiction with what another high profile Microsoft employee said about the Zune. On the same day the price cut was announced, Mindy Mount, corporate vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, gave the gadget that emanated from the minds of Redmond engineers a glorious…B! That’s right folks, even Microsoft officials are, well, not so satisfied with the final result and, paradoxically, they do realize its main flaws!
During a Citigroup technology conference in New York, Mount said: “We all feel that last year was a good, solid effort for first year. I’d give it a B-. Some things were really great.”
Yes, the Zune does look and feel like a brick, even in the hands of a corporate vice president, because she mentioned among the “not so great things” the fact that customers were expecting a lighter MP3 player. And a video download service for that matter.
The good things that Microsoft did with the Zune were to put a large screen in it and an intuitive and easy to use interface. No one can deny them that. And “some [other] elements of hardware were nice” too, according to Mount.
Some might say that $199 is the right price for a B-category MP3 player… However, contradictions don’t stop here: despite the rumors that a new generation of Zunes is underway (in favor of which pictures were posted on the Web), Mount added that “We don’t have anything to announce right now for the holiday season,” leaving Zune fans with a fat lip for this year’s critical shopping interval. Could it be because the production ran into some cable issues? We don’t know, but if Microsoft enters the competition with Apple with 1 year old devices (and see that in the context in which Apple is allegedly announcing today its new line of iPods) I fear for the future of Zune…
There’s more to this though: Mount also told reporters that a Zune phone rivaling Apple’s iPhone is not completely out of the question. "It wouldn't be unreasonable to think at some point there might some integrated thing," Mount said, responding to a question referring to "a mobile phone combined with features of its Zune digital music player."