Despite earlier independent assessments that Microsoft's Zune player had failed to get into the top ten sales list of portable music players, the company executives seem curiously confident that they can make some headway with the music purchase side in the EU market.
A Reuters article highlighted on c|net News quotes some comments by Jason Reindorp, indicating that Microsoft have a long-term strategy for Zune and its complementary music service. This approach seems to be supported by earlier figures showing Zune had a 10% share of the US mobile audio market; a share which surprised many analysts.
Further comments made by Reindorp indicate that the player itself will undergo some evolution, probably in time for next winter:
"The industry moves in this sort of Christmas to Christmas cycle. So you can expect that there will be more devices, more features in the market at that point," he said. "Our next round of introductions will probably be in time for the holiday of this year."
Clearly Microsoft are taking some risks with the Zune concept, but their plan of a 3-year, slow-but-sure challenge to iPod dominance seems well worked out. Whether it succeeds or not depends on their ability to persuade people that the WiFi song-sharing facility of Zune (really the only significant difference between it and the rest of the market), is worthwhile. They also need to take a more detailed look at a breakdown of the market share, which indicates that they're not making such great inroads where it really matters: the student market in US college towns.
