Zune Thoughts: Zune's Foot Is In the Door. What's Next?

"So if all these musings are right, 2.0 will be quite a treat for all of us. However, the folks at Apple are no dummies; they must know what the folks at Redmond are up to. We can see Apple playing the waiting game as we speak, the current 5th generation video iPod has been out since Oct. 12 2005 with minimal updates….we’re coming up on the 2 year anniversary this Oct., and yet we still haven’t seen what Steve has up his sleeves. With both the iPod and Zune looking to update their offerings this year, we’ll finally see the big guns come out – as this is an important time for both products."

Charlie of Zune Corps has written an incredibly insightful article on the direction of the Zune and its competition with the iPod. Charlie disagrees with my sentiments that the most important thing for the Zune right now isn’t Zune 2.0 but a flash Zune. He makes his points so beautifully that I almost agree with him on the absolute importance of Zune 2.0. He does remind me why I fell in love with the Zune in the first place. Microsoft promised a portable media revolution with the Zune. Zune 1.0 definitely has NOT been a revolution. It has been fun though.

So I don’t know what to think. A flash based Zune is what I think is the most important piece to getting the Zune into the hands of millions of people. It doesn’t have to be Zune 2.0 for it to be a home run for Microsoft. But after reading Charlie’s article I do think there is one thing a flash Zune has to be. Zune 1.5. Common Microsoft, you can give it to us.