By Andy McCue, 22 September 2004 11:55
NEWS Microsoft has admitted that Apple has stolen a march on rivals with the stylish design of its iPod music player, but warned there is still a big market to play for.
In an interview with silicon.com, Microsoft UK boss Alistair Baker said: "The iPod is a good product and something that has captured the imagination of the market but the real game is going to be played later on."
Apple has already established a strong early lead in the music player and download market with the trendsetting iPod and its iTunes music store but Baker reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to its own media roadmap.
"Microsoft has a very strong heritage in media, whether it is around audio, digital rights management or video handling," he said. "Apple's iPod is in the early adopter stage but there is a big market to play for. It will evolve dramatically and broadband is one of the catalysts."
Baker cited the latest release of Windows Media Player along with the likes of Creative's Zen multi-purpose audio and video portable media device as the way Microsoft sees the market going, although he admitted they will have to come down in size to rival the compactness and usability of the iPod and other MP3 players.
"We'd anticipate the hardware manufacturers will look at the design. There's a lot of money in consumer electronics going into building high-capacity, high-fidelity devices," he said.
A report out this week from IDC predicts the worldwide market for MP3 players will hit $58bn by 2008 as Apple faces increasing competition from other vendors.
Comments
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1. Bruce McFadden
Microsoft always seems to say "the real winner will be decided much later" as a way of minimizing the fact that they are followers and not innovators. And they also seek to minimize the iPod phenomenon by calling those who buy it "early adopters" ... I'm not sure what the definition of an early adopter is, but by the time Apple has sold literally millions of them, and my 8 year old niece is about to get her own, I think the term "early adopter" has been stretched pretty thin, to the point of meaningless. The people who are buying the iPod now are mainstream consumers, "adopters" if you will. Microsoft can rationalize this any way it wants to, but please don't try to dismiss and minimalize both what Apple has accomplished, and the very competitive road for MS and other competitors ahead. Apple didn't just design a "cool device" which is probably how MS sees the iPod -- the design is almost secondary, the true magic of the iPod is an almost unheard of level of hardware and software integration -- a seamless experience that the computer industry only rarely offers. This isn't just Apple worshipping -- anyone who uses an iPod almost instantly recognizes that the experience is superior, and will never go back to suffering with hard to use features, buggy software and restrictive usage policies. Apple isn't winning this market on technology, in fact iPods deliberately offer LESS features than most of the competitors out there -- but the features it does offer are almost sublimely functional, resulting in a device that simply works. Until MS and others are able to pull off the same quality of experience, consumers will not settle for inferior hardware, marketing scare tactics, slanted innacurate "analysis" and all the usual garbage deployed by the tech industry.
2. Peter West
Well said Bruce McFadden! Another effect of this is that once people try the iPod and realise that Apple stuff "just works" they start to think about switching their computing platform as well as their MP3 player. A friend of mine has just bought a Powerbook and a pile of other Apple kit after having an iPod for a couple of months. His old Windows laptop is gathering dust.
3. Marco Ruschioni
Apple may have been the pioneers but have you visited the iPod messageboards lately? The build quality is far more aesthetically pleasing than it is functional. We could talk for hours on battery life and the general faults in the device, so as MS says - there is a VERY large area that can be improved upon. Obviously this competition is healthy as improvements will only be made and research will provide us with better cutting edge technology. For the consumer, this will be quite enjoyable to watch...that's for sure.