Zune Thoughts: Round 2 : Fight!

“Gotta love those Steve Jobs events - designed to bowl over Apple's fan base and its competitors with one stunning announcement after another. Masterful! Now that the dust has started to settle, do opportunities exist for Zune amidst the new Apple line-up? Is there even room for a second major player in the digital media market?”
– Harvey Chute, Zunerama

“I'll admit it … the frustration of a year of Zune WiFi with no real purpose eclipsed by Apple actually beating Zune to the wireless punch has been hard. Is there any reason to buy anything other than an iPod right now? What role does the Zune have anymore?”
– Team Zune Luv

This seems to be a recurring theme this week with the announcement of the new iPod line. I believe I emailed Jason immediately when I found out and said something to the effect of that the Zune 2.0 better be really awesome. So to close out this week, I’m going to close out with where the Zune still fits after yesterday. Personally, after today, I’m refocusing my effort on my favorite MP3 player. Yep, it’s still the Zune. So where does the Zune fit in now? Harvey over at Zunerama has some ideas.

“There's another aspect of the new iPod line-up that could be exploited. Follow my simple logic:
a. The highest capacity iPods are the iPod Classics, in 80GB and 160GB.
b. These are thus the iPods most suited to storing a lot of video and movies content.
c. These do not, however, seem to be optimized for watching videos and movies. These still have a somewhat small screen (2.5"), and that screen is not widescreen.”

So, after taking a few breaths and looking over what Apple has given the world, there is fortunately still room for Microsoft. Let’s not forget what is still a HUGE advantage in my eyes of the Zune over the iPod and that’s the subscription based model. The WiFi was such a great idea that everyone knows Microsoft blew it on. Not that they still can’t give us some amazing things. Some of our readers have had great ideas on where you could take WiFi in some innovative directions.

As cool as WiFi stores and sharing are the main thing we all use our players for is still content. Whether its pictures, movies or the old standby, music we all have them to enjoy one or more of those three things. Apple’s iPod Touch is currently the best device for watching video from the looks of it. The problem with 8 or 16 GB is that it will fill up fast. Especially video.

There is an option that I can’t for the life of me understand why it rarely if ever comes up in discussion. If Microsoft were ever to offer movie subscriptions, I think that would blow a lot of people away. Why isn’t this even a consideration? An 80 GB HDD player with the ability for $15 - $20 a month download movies and TV shows? I think Microsoft needs to deliver something big with Zune 2.0, why not that?

Round 1 has ended. Round 2 is just getting started. Let's see what Microsoft has to throw into the ring.