According to the Associated Press, Microsoft is prepared for a long uphill battle to unseat the industry leading iPod. President of Microsoft Corp.'s entertainment and devices group, Robbie Bach, told analysts that the Zune product line will require millions of dollars in investment and will not pay off immediately. Bach added that the timeline for growing the Zune product line was more on the order of 3 to 5 years.
Could this be Microsoft's Moby Dick? With the games division already losing money, an admittedly massive investment and effort required to even attempt a significant entry into the digital music device arena, and coupled with the fact that Microsoft's device will directly compete with licensees of the PlaysForSure DRM technology, the Zune project faces a laundry list of uphill battles to come.
[via The Associated Press]
1. Microsoft's efforts to enter the hardware business are always poor - the XBox is still losing money, anyone remember the much-hyped Origami PDA? This Zune thing looks like an unimaginative iPod rip-off. Microsoft should stick to software. I run an iPod blog (www.ipod.org.uk) - iPods rule!
Posted at 5:14AM on Jul 28th 2006 by Andrew Thomas