Microsoft calls time on Zune media player hardware

Even Nokia wouldn't want it

By Tony Smith, 15th March 2011

Microsoft is to pull the plug on its Zune line of media players, it has been claimed. The software giant won't be introducing any new models, insists an insider.

If the unnamed mole cited by Bloomberg proves to be correct, we won't be surprised.

The media player market is now in decline, and Zune was never a major part of it, even in the US, the country in which Microsoft first released the platform. You can now buy them now in Canada too, apparently.

Folk use their phones as media players these days, which makes Microsoft's decision to base its smartphone platform on Zune's system software all the more sensible. Indeed, said the source, MS' Zune efforts, such as they are, will be retargeted at Windows Phone 7.

If only on the basis of persuading Nokia to buy into WinPho 7, the phone OS will do more for Microsoft's bank balance than Zune alone ever would have.

Microsoft hasn't revised the Zune hardware since 2009. ®

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

COMMENTS

House Rules Send Corrections

All Reader Comments (19)

Highly Rated

Posted Tuesday 15th March 2011 13:31 GMT

David Lawrence

Am I the only dinosaur....

...who wants a media player that has sufficient capacity to hold my entire music collection, which simply will not fit on an SD card? I don't have the time to keep changing the contents of a lower-capacity storage card so I can stick it into my phone and use that. Life's too short. My ipod classic lasts AGES between charges where the phone is nowehere near as good if you use it as a pmp. Sadly there seems to be no viable alternative and I guess that will continue until someone brings out a small, high-capacity, low power consumption alternative to the hard disc.

Posted Tuesday 15th March 2011 12:06 GMT

Code Monkey