Zune Thoughts: Apple Doubles iPod Touch Storage to 32 GB

Apple has bumped up the storage of the iPod Touch to a whopping 32 GB (the iPhone also got doubled), although they added an equally-whopping $100 price tag to it, making it a $499 USD player. That's a lot of money for a media player, but when you factor in the new software update (which includes mail, notes, and other functionality) and the new storage, what you have is essentially a WiFi PDA that's a great media player, and you have more storage than any similar device on the market - the closest competitor might be a Dell Axim X51v with its VGA screen and a 32 GB CompactFlash card.

What does this mean to the Zune? At this point, not much - there's no Zune that can really compete with the iPod Touch. Microsoft's product offerings are clearly designed to compete against the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic. But Apple has certainly raised the bar for the other players in the market, and if Microsoft is planning to come out with a Zune to compete with the iPod Touch, they'd better have a 32 GB offering (or bigger). I also can't help but notice that if the Zune had a memory card slot, there'd be an opportunity for Zune owners to easily expand the storage on their devices. The Zune team has to get out of this "if Apple isn't doing it, why should we?" mentality they seem to be stuck in...