I wonder who bought the Zune?
No one I know, anyway. Probably a bad [like, really, really bad] investment on their part.
“I wonder who bought the Zune?”
Don’t laugh. Look at Microsoft’s history. When they want dominance in a market, they’re very very patient. NT 3.51 was slaughtered by Netware, but NT 4 led to domination that MS has never relinquished. Internet Explorer 1 and 2 were jokes, largely ignored. But by IE 3, MS was a threat in the browser market. By IE 5, they dominated it utterly. MS SQL server, once a joke in corporate IT departments, now dominates small and midsized businesses, and is now encroaching on Oracle’s territory. Wordperfect was once the standard, when Word was an also-ran. And Exchange server utterly dominates corporate email departments.
What Micrsoft wants, Microsoft gets. And they’re both flush with cash, and patient enough to make it happen.
MS has already taken the first step in paving the way for Zune’s dominance. Windows Media is now the dominant delivery codec for streaming audio and video on the web (except for movie trailers, where Quicktime still dominates).
Microsoft is a superpower financially, but fights like a third world insurgent in emerging markets (or markets that it does not yet dominate, like MP3 players).
This is not admiration on my part, simply a statement of facts. I use a wide variety of operating systems, and my favorite is Apple’s OS X. After I bought a Mac, I decided that I wouldn’t be buying Vista for my own personal use.