After Microsoft w=has adopting a business model that may cut music companies in on the sale of its Zune hardware along with the traditional cut of content fees, the big software company is pushing another feature to grab share from Apple.The Zune has the capacity to locate other Zunes and then share files with them wirelessly. The iPod cannot make this claim nor can any of its other rivals. The technology draws on features from Microsoft’s earlier development of the Xbox game platform.Many in the portable media player industry have written off the Zune as an expensive endeavor from Microsoft which is doomed to fail because of the iPod’s huge distribution base. Of course, a similar case could be made regarding Japanese cars entering the US market in the 1960s.Microsoft is changing the paradigm of what a portable music player can do and how its content partners can profit. This, at the very least, will put pressure on Apple to consider what it must do to keep its lead. As an analyst from Jupiter Media pointed out to BusinessWeek recently: “Close ties to the music industry could pay off for Microsoft in the short term with exclusive record industry deals. Companies such as Universal, for example, may grant Microsoft the rights to offer new releases earlier than rival services.”At this point, with Microsoft’s marketing muscle behind it, the Zune may be changing the landscape for multimedia devices just enough to become successful and bleed Apple in the process.Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
MSFT Zune Puts More Pressure On iPod (MSFT)(AAPL)
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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