Thoughts On the New Zune

Introduction

The big news item this week is the introduction by Microsoft of their new Zune line. Of course it's natural to compare the new Microsoft audio player line to the new iPods, and I've been researching the Zune to come to some preliminary conclusions. I will say that I'm much more positive about the line than I was last year (and much of my analysis was correct).

While it's hard to think about a behemouth like Microsoft as an underdog, in the audio player market, they kind of are. Last year, they chose to only introduce one player, and a hard drive based one at that, now known as the Zune 30 (more on that a little later). However, those that counted them out of the audio market forget that (a) they have a ton of cash for development, and (b) that the iPod, despite the never ending hype, is not quite perfect.

Microsoft clearly learned something from their mistakes, and we now have a new and improved Zune line up which will be available on November 13th for sale here in the States. Here's a summary of the latest Zunes:

Zune 4 and Zune 8

With flash players outselling the hard drive gear by a very healthy margin, clearly they needed to fill the hole in the lineup. Besides, flash players are cheaper, so this is a way to get into the Zune family, without committing the serious money, and then they can trade you up in a year or two, as you outgrow the capacity. They went for a form factor that looks similar to the previous iPod Nano with a taller design than the current Nano. The screen is 1.8" and the unit does feature Wi-Fi. The memory is 4 or 8 gigs, and it will retail for $149 and $199 respectively.

Zune 80

The Zune 80 is the new flagship player. While they stayed away from the touch interface, it has a new ZunePad control, shared with the flash Zunes, also known as the squircle (which is really a geometric shape in case you're wondering, see here). They significantly expanded the hard drive space, to match the lower end iPod Classic's capacity of 80 gigs. It still has the WiFi, but it is expanded a little bit that podcasts can be downloaded over a WiFi network, the unit can sync with your desktop WiFi, and tunes shared WiFi can still only be played three times, but the three day restriction has been lifted. It will sell for $249.

Zune 30

Everything old is new again. In an interesting twist, the original Zune is redubbed the Zune 30, and will continue to soldier on. While this is last year's player, and the interface is not redesigned on this rebadged Toshiba Gigabeat (which was hardly worth rebadging), the Zune 30 will get an improvement. In a good move by Microsoft, there will be a firmware update to bring the new WiFi features to the Zune 30. I think this is a smart decision for two reasons: (a) this rewards the loyalty of the original adopters (think the opposite of the iPhone debaucle), and (b) there probably are some unsold Zune 30's floating around, and this encourages them to be sold for $199, and not sit in a warehouse. (the brown Zune 30 is currently $172 on Amazon).

What They Did Wrong

I already see a few mistakes. The first is that they come out with players one month after the new iPods, that only match the capacities. They should be striving to pass the competition, and not merely match it. As an "underdog" they needed to offer more capacity at the same price, or the same capacity at a lower price, and I didn't see that. Of course, at least the Zunes may go on sale, whereas iPods generally don't. I also think that they shouldn't play Apple's game, and come out with a player in a different capacity. How about a 100 gig Zune for $279?

I also would have liked to see the players do more with their WiFi. Downloading new content WiFi, without a computer is what the newest iPods do, at least at Starbucks, and the Zune needs to compete with that. The podcasts are a start, but where is the streaming radio? Wireless downloading when I'm at my computer is not that valuable as I have to plug it in to charge it anyway, so I'm still fishing for cables.

Finally, if they wanted to continue the Zune 30 (which they should), I think they should have planned on giving it the same case as the slimmer Zune 80, but that can be added in a few months, after the existing stock sells out.

What They Did Right

Unlike last year, they did a lot right this time. The new Zune 80 is much slicker, and has a slimmer size than before. The new ZunePad, from the videos I've seen (see here), looks like a real easy user interface with the combination of scrolling and circling. They also put in a 3.2" video screen, which trumps the iPod Classic's 2.5", and makes video viewing a reasonable option, and is only a little smaller than the iPod Touch at 3.5". I also like that they incorporated the WiFi into the flash players, as well as the same ZunePad for consistency across the line.

Finally they lost the brown color, and replaced it with green!

In Conclusion

Of course the jury is still out until the Zunes are used "in the wild." However, at this point, I'm pleased to see that the Zune team has provided a reasonable alternative to the world of iPod.

--Jonas