Okay Geek Farm
Microsoft kills the Zune, nobody seems to notice
Brandon Davenport
For years, Microsoft has pushed their “breakthrough” personal media player down the throats of consumers, and we took it like bad medicine. Sure it was a great device, and the software rocked our socks, but the whole “Zune” world was completely drowned out from the public eye due to Apple’s success with the iPod Touch, and the sea of other PMPs.
Why Microsoft killed the Zune
Microsoft is a company that impulsively sticks it’s hands in any market that’s popular, and usually finds moderate success, and rarely triumphs. Most of Microsoft’s smaller projects wither away to nothing, and the Zune HD was one of those small projects, but Microsoft saw huge potential.
Killing the Zune was the best decision Microsoft could have made. Upon Windows Phone 7’s arrival, the Zune HD completely vanished out of sight. WP7 had everything we loved in the Zune — the great software, beautiful metro OS and support for widely adopted Microsoft software. The new Windows Phones were taking the world by storm and Microsoft new they had to kill the Zune — Windows Phone was eating the Zune’s already small market share for breakfast.
Microsoft will continue to sell existing models of the Zune and hopefully supply us with new updates and cool features (probably not), but they will not be making any new devices. As we watch Zune fade out into the dusky distance, we can only hear the echo of Steve Ballmer from 5 years ago:
“We can beat them, but it’s not going to be easy” — Steve Ballmer 2006
