err, this would be a pretty serious thread to iphone (and thus the entire ipod brand)
I'll assume you meant 'threat'.
😀
The Zune is a decent player and has attracted good reviews and interest from PC tech heads. It is also only their first attempt, MS showed with the xbox that they are willing to throw money at a market to establish themselves in the long term. They have also showed that they can develop hardware in a very short space of time regardless of cost.
The Zune is a decent player that has attracted *mixed* reviews, and *minimal* interest from PC tech heads. Remember, this is the DAP that was out-sold by a record player less than a month after it was launched.
No argument with the 'MS will throw money at a problem' point, it's what they're best at. Unfortunately, they throw money at a problem, and consistently end up with mediocre solutions. It's just the way they are.
Where have they showed they can develop hardware in a very short space of time (given that cost isn't really a factor for MS)? The XBox? Essentially a PC. The 360? Not developped in 'a short space of time'. The Zune? A different face-plate on a pre-existing Toshiba MP3 player that didn't sell well the first time around.
The iPhone looks like an amazing piece of kit, but it has deal breaking flaws for many people:
No 3G (yet)
Only 4-8 GB storage
VERY expensive
Locked to one network
For the most part, the *US* doesn't have 3G yet. Where it does it's extremely expensive, and the phones that support it are battery hogs (less than 2 hours use of 3G functionality on a phone that otherwise gives 30 hours of talk-time).
Only 4-8GB of storage. Only? Most smartphones come with 128MB or less! Sure, they've got an SD (or mini-SD, or micro-SD) slot, but the phone doesn't have 4-8GB of storage.
Very expensive. Compared to what? Seriously, compared to what? You're not going to find a smart-phone on the market that has the same features as the iPhone for less. Period. End of story. Even if you ignore the mulit-touch nature of the screen, and the built-in storage capacity the iPhone is the least expensive phone in its feature-set neighborhood. The phones that come close in features & price come with 128-256MB of storage, and you'll spend another $80 getting a 4GB mini-SD card for them if you can even find one (god forbid you want an 8GB card).
For a Zune phone to be a threat it wouldn't need to have all the amazing iPhone features, it could simply be an MP3/Video Player capable of making calls and sending e-mails with a 20-30 GB capacity and lower price.
A Zune phone without all the amazing iPhone features would be yet another Windows Mobile smart-phone, which combined have managed to capture 4.5% of the smart-phone market which represents a piddly 5% of the cell-phone market. Give it a 20-30GB drive, and you're looking at something even larger than the 30GB Zune (which is slightly larger than the 80GB iPod). Remember, a device doesn't get *smaller* when you start adding radios and antennas. If the Zune phone has 20-30GB of flash, it's *not* going to be less expensive than the iPhone.
Should they go the whole hog and make a PDA phone, they would be able to call upon all the experience they have in the mobile software business already.
The experience that finally brought us an acceptably usable PDA interface with winCE 5 (Windows Mobile 5)?
Bitch all you want about idea stealing but you must never underestimate MS.
I've discovered over the past 10 years as a software developer (using mostly Microsoft products) that it's actually quite *difficult* to underestimate Microsoft. For example, when they first announced the intended ship-date of Longhorn (well before they announced the Vista name), I had it pegged as being released in early- to mid-2006. When did it ship? Late 2006 for enterprise customers, and early 2007 for consumers.
For me capacity and price are the biggest problem with the iPhone. Apple will surely have to broaden the iPhone line to appeal to average customers. An iPhone nano seems like an obvious move.
If capacity and price are the biggest problems you have with the iPhone, I can only assume you have the same problem with every other smart phone on the market. None have anywhere *near* the capacity of the iPhone, and nothing with anything close to the feature-set of the iPhone is noticably cheaper.
There's only one way Microsoft is going to beat the feature-set of the iPhone *and* beat the price. Unfortunately, that way is an illegal activity for a monopoly referred to as 'dumping', where the monopoly enters a market selling their goods below cost in order to drive out the competition. To top it off, if MS *did* try dumping, they'd have more than just Apple filing anti-trust complaints. They'd have the entire smart-phone market *including* their Windows Mobile smart-phone partners.
