By Jo Best, 28 May 2004 17:00
NEWS As Microsoft spreads its technological reach ever wider, it seems the men and women at Redmond fancy themselves as the next Steve Jobs. One exec revealed that Microsoft is planning on getting more involved with the digital music player market.
Not just any old digital music players, mind. Digital music players that will apparently retail for $50. And, according to Microsoft's corporate VP of MSN Yusef Medhi, they will "look and feel" as good as the iPod and work with Redmond's software.
Medhi sees a "multitude" of players arriving on the market in the near future to work with its software at a fraction of the cost of Apple's.
It seems that Gates and Ballmer could well be trying to emulate the success of arch-rival Apple. Apple's success in the online music market started with its online song-shop iTunes and led to the tsunami of iPod buying.
Microsoft has already announced its efforts in the song shop field, but according to Mehdi, a selection of music players that work with the Windows Media format will hit the shops around about the same time and offer consumers more choice than Apple.
Comments
There are 10 comments. Join the discussion
1. Dom
Wow! I am so impressed by MS inovation departement! A pocke size device that let's you listen to music recorded in digital format. Am sure nobody though of that before!
Mind you we are still at stage 1
Stage 2 is: sale a device as user friendly as the Ipod (am sure the MS "copy" dept can handle this) but much cheaper, undercutting the exiting market.
Stage 3 when the market has been killed and we have a monopoly (this has been taken for by proprietary formats), crank the prices back up.
Frankly, why do I have this impression of the "deja vu". I know I rememeber some past history example:
1st Apple cam up with a good GUI, next
MS came up with guess what... a GUI, the MS "inovation" dept having moved the tasks bar from top to the bottom of the screen.
Or IBM showed a watch running Linux and a couple of years later MS "invented" one as well.
As the Apple Ipod the question I was pondering was not if but when MS would
once againg steal some else's idea.
2. Iain
not exactly a story here is it?
rumour and conjecture that microsoft may at some time in the future release an mp3 player of unkown size or capacity...
3. anonymous
How is what Microsoft talking about "better"? I see cheaper, I see "as good as" (I won't be holding my breath on either count), but I don't see any "better."
4. Mark SPLINTER
The Xbox is lauded for its beauty, compactness and design, so I will be first in line for a Microsoft WMA player to play all these fabulous WMA files i have downloaded from commercial sites.
I for one would also welcome a system whereby Microsoft could take micropayments from my credit card every time I whistle a tune.
5. jon
XBOX was supposed to be a "better" PS2 than Sony's, yet Sony still out sells XBOX on a yearly bases by 5 to 1.....
obviously only MSFT thought XBOX was a better PS2 than Sony's.....
Tablet PC's were supposed to be better Laptops, then Laptops.... yet Tablet PC's have been reduced to a joke in the market....
obviously only MSFT thought Tablet PC's would compete well.....
MSFT's smartphone was supposed to be better than the existing smart cellphones out there, yet no one is buying them, obviously only MSFT thought that their smartphone was better....
same with the PDA, and the smart watch, and the "search engine"..
see any trends yet?
MSFT hasn't gotten anything right in like 6 years now..... ever since they got fat and lazy.........
while you wait for your micro payments, and your device that plays your music, Apple users have been enjoying those for two years now......
you've got to wonder about people who beat themselves up waiting for an "innovation" when that "innovation" is nothing but a copy of existing better products already on the market....
but thank god for sheep like you, without the 90% walmart shoppers of the world, the economy would collapse for everyone, including the ones smart enough to buy BMW's Harleys and Macs.....
6. Rick Hansen
Yes, it can be cheaper, but there are already cheaper units available. The question is: Will it provide the same storage capability and easy of use for every aspect of the digital music process from archiving your own CDs to purchasing music online?
7. lantzn
Hey jon just wait until MS releases really awesome WiFi wireless hardware, oh wait...
8. R.F. Burns
I think that most people would rather not give Micro$oft a penny more than they have to. If this means never buying another Micro$0ft product they would be thrilled. After buying a Sony PS2 my kids wanted another game console. Rather than add any more money to the monopolist Micro$oft's coffers I opted to buy my kids a Nintendo GameCube to complement the Sony PS2. Why anyone would rather have a Micro$oft Media "Brick" instead of a sleek Apple iPod is beyond me.
9. anonymous
SEveral things - first every company is going to tell their PR person to say it's better than itunes/ipod - it's a ipod killer, yaddi, yaddi, yaddi. In PR, you focus on the one thing you have that your competitor doesn't - never mind the 300 things they beat you on.
Microsoft - brochureware design. None of MS products are better than anybody's elses, they just throw in every feature they can cram in so they can answer - yep, we've got that.
Microsoft FUD - yes, hard to believe but MS will have you believe things they put out are 'the standard,' like WMA - and naive journalists will lap it up since they don't really undestand anything technology.
10. anonymous
One Word............VAPORWARE