Microsoft IPod 'Killer' Is Doomed By Eliot Van Buskirk Wired News
02:00 AM Jul, 24, 2006 http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,71435-0.html Details are still light about Microsoft's "Zune" iPod killer but if the rumor mill is right, the device will have some or all of the following features: Wi-Fi connectivity, video playback, Xbox integration and some sort of community feature for letting music lovers interact with each other. Microsoft's next-generation music store will supposedly offer music at a variety of download and subscription prices, rather than the flat $1 per-song standard inaugurated with Apple's iTunes Music Store (and that Steve Jobs reportedly refuses to budge on, much to the record labels' chagrin). Prior to Friday's announcement, some were calling the new device the "mPod" (Microsoft + iPod) killer. But given Microsoft's typically tone deaf approach to usability and Apple's market lead it will be a miracle if its next nickname isn't the "iClod" (iPod + clone + awful). Microsoft's track record with hardware isn't all bad. The Xbox and Xbox 360 are the company's biggest hardware success stories -- probably the reason the Xbox team is reportedly developing the upcoming music player. But hardware is definitely not its forte. The MSN TV experiment was a bust, Microsoft was quickly forced out of the wireless base station business, and its webcam line isn't anywhere near as popular as offerings from Apple, Creative, Logitech and others. Microsoft's entry into music-player manufacturing is obviously a last resort, undertaken kicking and screaming. The company's strategy so far has been to stay behind the scenes, creating backend technologies that enable its hardware and music store partners to sell music and devices to consumers. The resulting system has yielded some major innovations, including a subscription-based platform that lets customers play rented music on portable players for as long as they pay their bills. But its grand plan to play musical Switzerland to a host of third-party vendors, as it has done in the PC market, has proven as popular as Swiss music. (Cue accordions and alpenhorns.) No slight to the Swiss; I'm a big fan of the music-subscription idea. But the companies that use it, like Rhapsody, Napster and iRiver, have so far failed to dent Apple's lead. The system, while great in theory, is unwieldy in practice. Microsoft has to roll out changes to each and every partner, rather than implementing them itself, the way Apple does. One manufacturer told me it had to delay the launch of a player because it was waiting for Microsoft to send out the USB-2.0 spec. And the situation appears to be similar when it comes to digital rights management. Updates to Microsoft's complicated DRM schemes can cause serious compatibility problems, because the chain between Microsoft and supported MP3 hardware is so long. Changes to its online music stores can cause files not to transfer to "PlaysForSure" MP3 players, and so on. In the PC market, it may have worked to sell software to hardware manufacturers, but the inclusion of DRM in today's MP3 players makes them a different animal. Managing complicated, evolving DRM technologies requires the sort of complete control Apple has over the iPod ecosystem -- software, hardware, DRM and music store. The best alternative would be to dump DRM altogether and go with unencrypted MP3s -- a position advocated recently by Yahoo. Record labels aren't likely to support that, however, and their resistance effectively forces Microsoft to compete with a copy-restricted alternative. This a rich irony, given how badly the record labels would love to see someone -- anyone -- create real competition for the iPod and iTunes. Microsoft seems to have belatedly realized it can only hope to surmount the DRM obstacle by copying Apple's unified approach. This may be Microsoft's only remaining move, but that doesn't make it a winning one. Microsoft's new strategy, like many tech companies looking to break into a new market, is to offer new features you can't get anywhere else. But, as Microsoft itself proved over the years, features alone don't win technology wars. Having dominated the PC market with its Windows monopoly, Microsoft should know that cracking into a closed ecosystem is often a quixotic affair. Charging at a competitor whose products not only dominate but set the standard in quality is suicidal. There is no reason to think that a strategy of adding wireless and other features will win the hearts and minds of iPod fans. Through several generations of MP3 players, consumers have consistently chosen the ones that work simply (and simply work), over those that offer advanced features and added complexity. New features, no matter what's promised, will likely not convince people to abandon their little white boxes -- especially since none of the billions of purchased iTunes songs will play on whatever Microsoft releases. I'm all for adding advanced features -- especially wireless connectivity -- to MP3 players, as I've mentioned before. But given today's iPod-centric landscape, the attendant legacy issues, and past behavior of both consumers and Microsoft, the company's upcoming music player already looks like a loser. Apple has been sticking it to Microsoft lately in a series of TV ads that depict two desktop computers as people on the opposite sides of the hipness spectrum. The stodgy Microsoft guy wears a suit, needs lots of configuring, ships in separate boxes, and doesn't come with any fun extras. The Apple guy springs out of the box, completely assembled and ready to tackle digital photos, music, movies and more. I have to hand it to Apple; this ad has some truth to it when it comes to desktops, and applies even more to the upcoming face-off between the two companies in the digital-music hardware market. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
