Summary

The argument between Macs and PCs has and will always go back and forth. The same can’t be said about the iPod and the Zune. The iPod is Apple’s portable media player, and with out a doubt the best media player in the market. Ever since it entered the market it has dominated in sales over any other media player. Coming in second place and very far from first is Microsoft’s Zune. Microsoft has evolved it self into a wait and see company. In other words they became conservative; allowing other companies to take the risk developing new things, making sure they were successful before stepping in. Following their wait and see strategy, Microsoft waited to see if the Ipod would be successful and when it was they then decided to put the Zune in the market. This was a bad strategy, for Ipod was so big by the time Zune came out consumers paid it no attention. The Ipod just played downloaded music, the Zune came with FM Radio and a music subscription yet people were not rushing to purchase it. Personal casings were also available for the Zune and still with casings, radio, and mp3 people weren’t rushing to the stores. Microsoft has decided to take another jab at the Ipod and see if it can take charge of the media player market. Microsoft is aware that they probably won’t be able to steal all the Ipod costumers. So instead they will make a product that will bring different type of consumers together. Being that most of the features on the Zune and iPod are quickly being adopted by smartphone manufacturers Microsoft has decided to make a phone of it self. This smartphone, even though still a rumor, is supposed to have all the features of a regular smarphone with all the features the Zune already has and HD video game capability. Yes! You heard it HD video games. They are trying to make games like Halo available using Windows Mobile. If rumors are true this device will be the ultimate package. If they can pull this off they can take over the blackberry and the Iphone market, the portable media market, and on top of all that add the Xbox gamers. A spokesman for the Zune team declined to comment on the specific rumors, but told the Standard "we will deliver progress this calendar year on both hardware and software." Now imagine a phone you could use for work with email and internet, but use as a media player on the way to work, and on the way home from work be playing Halo, HD of course. Seems like Microsoft wants to hop in the drivers seat again.