Microsoft&#8217;s Rival Device Will Be Priced Similar to iPod: $249.99
529258
Microsoft plans to release its Zune music player on Nov. 14 in the U.S., just ahead of the holiday gift-buying rush.
716716
Microsoft's MSN Music store is by far the most capable rival to Apple's iTunes Music Store, even if it doesn't yet surpass it.-Rob Pegoraro
161490
Microsoft's Zune music player, a rival to Apple's iPod, goes on sale in the US, receiving mixed reviews.
346144
Microsoft Corp.  may have  a chance to take market share from the iPod as a Reuters survey  showed 35 percent of those interested in its Zune device would  be replacing an existing digital music player.
289400
As first confirmed by BetaNews earlier this month, Microsoft said Thursday that it would match the price of Apple's 30GB iPod, and lower the price of its Zune portable music device to $249.99 USD. Zune goes on sale November 14.
376796
(InfoWorld) - Best Buy,Â in cooperation with SanDisk and RealNetworks, is the latest company to join the growing list of competitors to Apple Computer's iTunes music service. Best Buy unveiled on Thursday a online music service, called Best Buy Digital Music Store, that allows customers to find, manage and purchase music online. It is powered by RealNetworks' Rhapsody 4.0 music service and lets users purchase and permanently download songs and albums, as well as subscribe monthly to listen to an unlimited number of songs, the company said. As part of the offering, Best Buy also will carry and promote SanDisk Sana e200R Rhapsody MP3 players, which have been optimized to work with its new music service. Both the players and the service will be available starting Oct. 15, the company said. Jennifer Schaidler, vice president of music for Best Buy, said the company is differentiating its service from Rhapsody by offering exclusive artist content and tailoring that to what Best Buy customers are purchasing. "Look at it as Rhapsody 4.0 plus," she said. "You get all the stuff that's there [on Rhapsody], plus more exclusive content." Selling CDs and MP3 players in its stores and online is already a successful part of Best Buy's business, so offering a music service was a logical next step for the company, Schaidler said. "Customers expect Best Buy to provide them with quality entertainment in an easy way," she said. Songs on the Best Buy Digital Music Store will cost $0.99, with monthly subscriptions that allow users to play an unlimited number of songs for $14.99 a month The news comes on the heels of the formal unveiling last week ofÂ the availability and pricing for Microsoft's forthcoming Zune Player and Zune Marketplace service. Microsoft will make the digital media players and service available in the U.S. on Nov. 14. Like Best Buy's new service, songs on the Zune Marketplace will cost about $0.99 each, though the charges will be according to a points system (i.e., 79 points a song) that will allow users to purchase items on other Microsoft properties, such as Xbox Live. Zune Marketplace's unlimited monthly subscription also costs $14.99 a month. Songs on Apple's iTunes service cost $0.99, but there is no monthly subscription available. Pricing for the SanDisk music player that works with the new Best Buy service is higher than that of comparable iPod or Zune devices, however. The Zune digital media player, which has 30G bytes of storage, will cost $249.99, the same as 30G-byte video iPods already available from Apple. SanDisk Sana e200r MP3 players come in two models -- a 2G byte model for $139.99 and an 8G byte model for $249.99. However, while the Zune player and the SanDisk Sana players include an FM radio tuner in addition to the ability to play digital music, videos and photos, the iPod has only the latter features. To promote its new service, Best Buy will launch with an exclusive track from recording artist Diddy from his new CD, "Press Play." The CD will be on sale Oct. 17.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
723826
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Zune digital media player will ship in the U.S. on Nov. 14 for $249.99, the company said Thursday, in line with the price of video iPods already available from Apple Computer. MicrosoftÂ announced its Zune playerÂ and the accompanying music store, called Zune Marketplace, earlier this month, but it did not provide pricing at the time. Some industry insiders believe Microsoft had to rethink the pricing after it learned that Apple was about to lower the price of its video iPods, which it recently did. Like the video iPods, the first Zune players will come with 30GB of storage. Microsoft also unveiled pricing for Zune Marketplace. Unlike Apple's iTunes, which lets users buy individual songs or entire albums but does not offer a subscription service, Microsoft will offer a monthly subscription called Zune Pass. For $14.99 a month, users will have access to millions of songs, Microsoft said. However, they won't actually own those songs and will only be able to access them while they have a subscription. Users will also be able to purchase songs individually using Microsoft's points system, which works a bit like a prepaid phone card. One track will cost 79 points -- or about $0.99, which is what iTunes charges per song. At retail, consumers can purchase 1,200 points for $15, 2,000 points for $25, 4,000 points for $50, or pay $44.97 for a three-month Zune Pass. Zune accessories will range in price from $19.99 to $99.99. They include the Zune Car Pack, which offers a built-in FM tuner with AutoSeek and the Zune Car Charger, and The Zune Home A/V Pack, which includes five products that integrate Zune with a television and music speakers. More information isÂ available here.Â  Microsoft is differentiating its Zune player from the iPod in several ways. In addition to allowing users to play music, videos and photos on a screen, the Zune player will include wireless technology and a built-in FM radio tuner. So far, iPods lack both of those. Zune devices also will come preloaded with media content, which iPods don't have. Songs the players will include out of the box are: âWicked Gilâ by Band of Horses, "The Mating Game" by Bitter Sweet, "Alala" by CSS, "At the End of the Sky" by Darkel, "Signs of Life" by Every Move a Picture, "Stay" by Small Sins, "Tell Me Tell Me" by The Adored, "Open Book" by The Rakes, and "A Pillar of Salt" by The Thermals. The music videos included with the Zune player are from several artists on Seattle's Sub Pop Records label, such as Chad VanGaalen, Kinski and the Fruit Bats. The players also will include film shorts on skateboarding, mountain biking and snowboarding. Microsoft didn't provide any availability information for outside of the U.S.
565123
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has predicted it will sell 1 million Zune devices in its first six months, a figure that would be more than Zune's chief rival iPod sold in its first 14 months but a relatively slow start for the much-hyped MP3 device. SinceÂ its retail debut on Nov. 15, customer interest in Zune has been lackluster, analysts report, and the company's projections for sales of the device are conservative. By contrast, Apple Computer Inc. will likely sell about 25 million iPods over the same period according to financial analysts, though the company only sold 600,000 iPods in the first 14 months of availability. Mike McGuire, a Gartner Inc. research vice president, said he was surprised Microsoft is expecting to sell so few Zunes in the first six months, given that the market for iPod and MP3 devices is thriving. On the other hand, "it's a decent objective," he said. "I was expecting a more aggressive goal," McGuire said. "But even though it's conservative it's going to be tough [to make that goal]." McGuire cited the fact that Microsoft is only offering one version of the device and the rapid nature of the media-player market, which is moving forward with new, cutting-edge devices all the time, as challenges for the vendor. Microsoft's achievements with Zune will depend on how successfully it builds a community around the product with its Zune Marketplace software and online store, as well as how quickly it can upgrade the initial Zune device with new features and models, McGuire said. Zune is in a distinctly different position than iPod was at its launch. IPods could only be used with Apple's Macintosh computers, which have a significantly smaller market share of the desktop computer market than Windows machines, the platform for Zune. In October 2001, when iPod was released, Apple PC market share was about 2.4 percent. And iPod was an unproved device, one of the first of its kind in a market that Apple ostensibly created, whereas Zune has the benefit of entering a thriving market. Of course, iTunes software for iPods now runs on millions of Windows PCs in addition to Macs. To date, Apple has sold more than 67 million iPods, and should sell about 82 million by the end of the year. The company has several versions of the iPod -- the video iPod, the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle -- in various sizes and colors. There are also an extensive array of accessories available for iPods. Microsoft's 30G-byte Zune costs US$249.99, the same price as the video iPod, but it's different from the iPod in two key ways. Zune includes an FM tuner and wireless capability that allows users to share songs between devices.
440895
REDMOND, Washington  - Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O   unveiled on Thursday its new "Zune" portable media player,   hoping its ability to share music wirelessly can win over   consumers despite its late entry five years after Apple's   market-dominating iPod.
659789
SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. has vowed to put considerable money and effort behind its bid to dethrone Apple Computer Inc.'s market-leading iPod, but it won't be using price as a weapon.
210223
Microsoft raises the curtain on its challenge to the iPod, the Zune digital media player.
320690
SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. cut the suggested retail price of its Zune music and video player by 20 percent yesterday, the same day Apple Inc. released new versions of its iPod media player.
465272
BetaNews has learned that pricing of the Zune device was included in the orginal draft of the Friday announcement, but was pulled after Apple lowered the price of the iPod. An analyst has provided creedence to these reports.
696749
SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp.'s effort to compete against Apple's iPod juggernaut will focus on the idea that people want to be able to easily share music with friends and others.
234673
(InfoWorld) - Apple will follow up its debut iPhone with a cheaper version based on the iPod nano, a JPMorgan financial analyst said yesterday, echoing comments last week by bloggers scouring the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database. Kevin Chang, a Taiwan-based analyst with New York's JPMorgan Chase, said that Apple will release a less-expensive iPhone in the fourth quarter, according to Reuters. Chang, who based his forecast on unnamed sources in the supply channel and an Apple application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filed last week, said a follow-up to the current iPhone could be based on the iPod nano, Apple's flash drive-based music player. "We believe that iPod nano will be converted into a phone because it's probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower-end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod nano," Chang told Reuters. At $300, a scaled-down nano-based iPhone might sell as many as 30 million to 40 million units in 2008, Chang argued. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, has fixed the iPhone sales target through 2008 at 10 million handsets. Apple's iPod nano currently sells for between $149 and $249. Chang's take comes after bloggers last week noticed a July 5 patent application titled "Touch pad with symbols based on mode" that, they theorized, could serve as the interface for an entry-level iPhone. Both Unwired View and MyiTablet, for instance, noted that the patent described a touchpad-based device that would serve as only phone and iPod. Unlike the current iPhone, the cheaper alternative would not boast a large screen or allow Internet browsing. The patent application spells out a touchpad similar to the iPod's click-wheel that would change modes -- and its display -- depending on the application. When in phone mode, for example, the circular touchpad could show dialing numbers in a style reminiscent of long-obsolete rotary phones. Switch to music mode, and the touchscreen reverts to a traditional iPod click-wheel for traversing artist or genre lists. Apple introduced the iPhone on June 29 to fanfare and long lines of customers.
767127
Microsoft Corp. said yesterday it expects to sell 1 million of its new Zune music players through the first half of 2007. That figure pales in comparison to Apple Computer Inc.'s market-leading iPod, but Microsoft contends it would be a good start.
413468
Microsoft Corp. is preparing to roll out a portable digital music player later this year, an apparent bid to capture a slice of the market now dominated by the iPod, music industry executives said Thursday.