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The Zune is criticised for it’s poor market share and is regarded as a failure. It’s important to remember that it took three years for the iPod to get market d
by arohner 17y ago
The Zune is criticised for it’s poor market share and is regarded as a failure. It’s important to remember that it took three years for the iPod to get market dominance, and it’ll take a lot longer than that for anyone to make inroads into it. To criticise the Zune for a poor market share misses the point. It’s like criticising a child because its first steps weren’t of olympic standards.
No. The Zune is criticized because before the iPod, there were no mp3 players for grandma. Apple obviously created a winning product. Depending on how charitable you want to be, Microsoft either 1) observed the same market opportunity and took longer to create an inferior product or 2) shamelessly ripped off the ipod, and did a poor job at it.
The author also compares a company with a market cap of $250 Billion to a child. The big boys play for keeps. There's no excuse for "well, they did their best" at companies of this scale. To quote another 80s movie: "Do or do not, there is no try".
- tomerico 17y agoWhy do you expect a $250B company to be able to dominate the market immediately? Companies do learn, and the article clearly shows how Microsoft did in fact manage to learn and produce better and better products. In my opinion it even missed some other big impact releases such as office 2010 web, which may be the largest player in the online docs market.
- ttrashh 17y agoI'd say they definitely followed here but to say they created an inferior product is harsh. The Zune UI is actually better than the iPod imho. That's why they took it for Windows Phone Series 7. The Zune software is FAR better than iTunes...I won't even add imho to that one.
- bediger 17y agoIsn't criticizing something (linux, Apache, Java, etc) for poor market share the favorite argument of the Microsoft Fanboy? It sure is in my experience. Those style of arguments show up in the "Windows has all the embarassing security problems because Evil Hackers target the largest market share" canard.
- wtallis 17y agoPoor market share despite overwhelming resources is evidence of either poor execution or a major external influence on public opinion. Apple fanboyism and Microsoft hate don't quite explain the extent of the zune's failure.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]