In today's Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg reviews Zune and makes the obvious comparison to the 30GB iPod. For once Mr. Mossberg has provided a fair and thorough review of a Microsoft product. His review is currently available on WSJ's public web site here. He also has a short video here.
As I have been reading pre release reviews, here are some of the emerging Zune's shortcomings:
- Shorter battery life than the iPod. Although I don't think it is a big usability problem, from a marketing stand point this is not good.
- Point system on Zune Market Place is lame. When I want to buy a $.99 cents song, why would I want to deposit $5 into Microsoft's already large coffers. However given the gift card market with iTunes, consumers may not have a problem with this.
- Screen is larger than the iPod's but the resolution is the same, making some graphics appear fuzzier
- No WIFI synchronization, although Mr. Mossberg reports that the wired synchronization is flawless.
- Inability to share one's music library between PC's. I have a system that I use to store all my iTunes music and share it with my wife's and my laptop. This is a major compromise in the Zune ecosystem.
- Zune's enclosure design is not as sleek as the iPod.
On the positive side:
- Zune stellar attribute is the ability to share music among devices. Although this ability is limited to purchased music. You can however synchronize your device as a guest using someone else PC based music library. Cool!
- People seem to like the navigation better than what is available on the iPod.
- People love the larger screen and the ability to rotate it. This is a big plus for watching movies.
- The brown Zune may be a big hit.
I believe Microsoft has a good start, they need to listen hard to the consumer base and continually improve the experience with frequent updates. It will be very hard for them to make any kind of dent in Apple's monumental market share. However with frequent updates to keep the device fresh, I think that in the next couple of years they could garner 10% of the market.
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