We heard that Microsoft is preparing for a mass layoff of its employees/contractors in January.
Well, I guess they are doing a rehearsal today by “firing” their Zune users.
Zune is the Microsoft answer to Apple’s iPod and today many of its users reported en-masse failures of this music player (specifically, the 30 Gb version of it). The player began freezing at the loading point and become unresponsive (and thus useless).
This is what Microsoft support says:
Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!
Which, basically, means they don’t have a clue yet of what causes these “blue screen of death – Zune version”.
Some people came up with an un-official fix though (try it at your own risk!).
Many users are disgruntled by this failure and plan on being done with the device. Zune wasn’t anyway a real contestant for iPod with all Microsoft’s efforts.
But look at the bright side of the story: those people can go to a New Year party to listen music (and dance). Which is what I’m just doing tonight ;)! (even if I am an iPod user)
The funny thing about this is that I am actually listening to my iPod while reading this post. I am not even sure why Microsoft tried to get into the music business.
I think they would do better in the iPhone space than against the iPod.
Maybe for the same reasons they entered on the Playstation and Nintendo turf: more money.
But comparing with games (where Xbox does well actually) music doesn’t provide a good return on investment for them.
They are big but that doesn’t guarantee their success in everything they get into (see the web also).
Will they enter iPhone’s land too next year? I mean, will they try to have a iPhone killer (not just the mobile operating system)? We’ll see…