Zune Thoughts: Update: Zune is Alive and Well!

Okay, clearly we've all jumped the gun and read far too much into the article our friends at Bloomberg posted yesterday. Zune is NOT dead and is clearly alive and well, according to Dave Mclauchlan, Senior Business Development Manager for Zune Hardware. "I've had tweets, emails, PMs and phone calls. People offering condolences, checking in on me, etc... etc... Stop, stop, stop!" stated Mr. McLauchlan in a post earlier today. Sorry Zune, we didn't mean to communicate your time-of-death prior to your heart actually being stopped. Really, we didn't.

That said, I have to believe that the Zune hardware has to evolve. Its latest hardware release, the Zune HD, is an older one (18 months old) and is in desperate need of new applications. While its probably the best sounding and overall portable music and video experience on the market, its content needs to evolve or it needs to die as a hardware platform.

Microsoft is clear that the Zune hardware platform for this year is Windows Phone 7. That's the right message. The Windows Phone platform has content and thriving marketplace of over 10,000 applications and games, subscription music and video galore. If Microsoft is truly going to succeed in the portable media player market they need to evolve the Zune Media player platform to consume applications, games and content from the same marketplace. Music. Check. Video. Check. Applications. Not so much.

Hopefully over the next few months Microsoft will become more clear how the Zune hardware platform will evolve, but I'm glad to hear that I shouldn't be laying my lovely silver Zune to rest any time soon.