Microsoft Plans to Release IPod Rival for Christmas

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYqZI5U2Snnc' target='_blank'>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYqZI5U2Snnc</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Microsoft Corp. is planning to have a portable music and video player out by Christmas in a challenge to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod. The digital player will have a wireless Internet connection, enabling users to download music without being linked to a computer, a feature the iPod doesn't offer, according to people briefed on Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's plans. Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, is seeking to take share from Apple's iPod, which commands 77 percent of the $4 billion U.S. market for digital music players, based on figures from market researcher NPD Group Inc. Apple's iTunes music store is used for 72 percent of music downloads. Microsoft has spent the past six years relying on partners to make players that use its software. "None of Microsoft's partners are doing the job that needs to be done," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research in New York. "Apple has set it up so Apple music flows only to Apple devices. It locks Microsoft out and gives Apple more of a hold.""</i><br /><br />J Allard and Robbie Bach were the two guys who spearheaded Microsoft's previous venture into creating their own hardware to support their content - the Xbox. Now they've been assigned to head their next venture, the 'XPod' (which may or may not be called the XPod). Only time will tell if MS can take a chunk out of Apple's revenue, but after the success of the XBox, I'd say they're on the right track. Personally, I would love to see some real competition to the iPod emerge. Apple's complete domination over the market is bad for consumers and bad for innovation. Competition gets us better devices at better prices.

[Phronetix]

The only problem with Microsoft's miscalculation in strategy in the music player business is that it may cost them tens or hundreds of millions in legal settlements. I don't see Creative, iRiver, or other vendors who've licensed the Microsoft brand of DRM, and partner with them in this market being very pleased about MS turning around and trying to compete with them. Lawsuits will surely follow. And after MS takes care of the pool of also-rans, the result will be: two brands of players in the market, and less competition and innovation.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft can put out a fairly decent product, and let's face it, Apple needs real competition. The only doubt that exists in my mind is about their desire to be too many things to too many people. Therefore, this player would also be a portable gaming machine, a calendar, clock, stopwatch (with adidas shoes partnership), GPS, video player, remote control, web browser etc. We already have that, it's called a pocket pc.

[aroma]

Agreed Dennis. If MS is going to do this, they need to concetrait on a straight media player, ala iPod, not a do-all device. I love my PPC, but when it comes to listening to my tunes, I always turn back to my iPod.

[jlp]

i'm afraid that as long as devices are tied to a DRM scheme it will be very problematic.

NOBODY who has invested in some comfortable amount of money in iTMS music will ever switch(*).

There's need for interoperability.

But that won't happen any time soon either (and not so soon too).

There is too much money at stake.

Even France's copyright laws tried to "force" Apple to open their DRM mafia but backed up gvery soon after.

Even tho it was a nice try, one single country, even a large one, is helpless against global corporations.

So MS will NEVER(*) take a part of Apple's share, its share might only come from new customers choosing its vs. Apple's offering.

(*)=except maybe for those who have little invested into the ipod and the few willing to foresake their previous investments).

[jlp]

This discussion remind me that nobody ever released a competing PPC to Palm's Lifedrive: a PPC with an integrated HDD. At least not a major player who could face Palm directly.

Casio a while back had a PocketPC with earphones that included a remote control on the wire; the E-200, but it didn't have a harddisk.

It did fairly well. Too bad they subcontracted it and had some quality control problems and it had very fierce competition with the ipaq.

Anyway I could imagine a Pocket Loox 720 with an integrated 20 GB HDD à la Archos Gmini 400.

BUT don't expect Archos to bring a Gmini xxx with WM on it, I know one of the engineers and these guys hate Windows.

They did make the PMA-400, but I doubt it had any success at all: way too expensive (around $1,000 when introduced) and used a QTopia-Linux distro on it.

[Ed Hansberry]

The only problem with Microsoft's miscalculation in strategy in the music player business is that it may cost them tens or hundreds of millions in legal settlements. I don't see Creative, iRiver, or other vendors who've licensed the Microsoft brand of DRM, and partner with them in this market being very pleased about MS turning around and trying to compete with them. Lawsuits will surely follow.
Why? Did MS sign a contract with these people that said they wouldn't make hardwre? the contract said "We, Microsoft, license you, the MP3 player maker, to use the WMA format and we won't make a competing device?"

Besides, Creative, iRiver and others have had 4-5 years to get their act together and the iPod is still walking all over them in the market place. Let MS try. Of course, if the experience is anything like WMP10 on the Pocket PC, Apple has nothing to worry about, except increased production demands for the iPod. :roll:

[Damion Chaplin]

This discussion remind me that nobody ever released a competing PPC to Palm's Lifedrive: a PPC with an integrated HDD.

That's because the technology wasn't up to snuff yet. The Lifedrive wasn't exactly a stellar success for that very reason (though it did well I suppose).

BUT don't expect Archos to bring a Gmini xxx with WM on it, I know one of the engineers and these guys hate Windows.

The Gmini 402 is already PlaysForSure compatible and thus is already URGE compatible. There's no need for them to release one with MS software.

(Hey, if you're listening Archos, we need a new firmware release for the Gmini400 to give us protected and lossless WMA support!)

[Phronetix]

Why? Did MS sign a contract with these people that said they wouldn't make hardwre? the contract said "We, Microsoft, license you, the MP3 player maker, to use the WMA format and we won't make a competing device?"

Besides, Creative, iRiver and others have had 4-5 years to get their act together and the iPod is still walking all over them in the market place. Let MS try. Of course, if the experience is anything like WMP10 on the Pocket PC, Apple has nothing to worry about, except increased production demands for the iPod. :roll:

I see what you're saying. Rather than try to bs or plaigerize my way through this, I dug up the bit from slashdot (http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/06/1843221) last week that I metamoderated and that helped frame my thoughts. It is a user's opinion, but I was impressed with the opinion. For easy reference, here's a direct quote:

Microsoft has been signing up companies to license it's WMA DRM for their players, getting all those companies to pay license fees, and agree to provide Microsoft with sample gear for 'PlaysForSure' testing, and also getting them to sign a license agreement to hold Microsoft harmless for any Intellectual Property violations (patents, design infringement, copyright, etc.)

Now they're going to go into direct competition with their licensees. This should go over well...

I'm sure the licensees all understand that they were really just preparing a market for Microsoft, and will quietly close up shop. Certainly, none of these companies such as Creative Labs has ever shown any tendency to cause trouble or litigate. I'm sure they can all simply rely on the US Justice Department's oversight and Microsoft's honoring the DOJ settlement and consent decree to ensure that Microsoft won't try to extend it's monopoly here.

The part that muddies this, and that you specifically mentioned, Ed, is that Creative, iRiver et al. have had years to do something with their hardware, and have very little to show for it. It is similar to Jesus' parable of the talents, except that would make Microsoft, in this case, errr (shudder)... well, you know all analogies break down eventually. :lol:

[sojourner753]

MS entering into the hardware market may be bad for the hardware vendors, but if they're successful its VERY good knows for the PlaysForSure online stores.

If what you quoted about the hardware samples for "testing purposes" is true, then I think thats where the legal exposure is for MS.

I'm in agreement with the parable of the "talents". Expect the part about making Microsoft the &lt;you know who> :wink: Although, they are author and finisher of the PlaysForSure platform. So...

Say what you want about MS, but when ever they enter a market they stir things up. Lets look at browsers. Sure Netscape didn't survive, but look at how the browser features started dropping out of the sky from that battle.
Look at the Playstationn versus XBox. May Nintendo will eventually get into the fray. :roll:

Bottom line IMHO. some of the other vendors wont survive, but a few, maybe only one will get in the fray and we'll see some good stuff appear.

Maybe someone will write a program to convert iTunes DRM to PlayForSure. Then Apple will sue. Lawyers will ocmplain that customers need freedom and choice. And that will blow the whole "lack of interoperablity" issue wide issue. I just don't think that will every happen until there is a viable scenario where customer actually want to switch and find out they can't.

So let MS get in the game and open the "can of worms".

[Chris Gohlke]

NOBODY who has invested in some comfortable amount of money in iTMS music will ever switch(*).

Current rumor has it that Microsoft may offer free copies of anything you have already purchased on iTunes. I've seen this printed in a couple places, so it is not totally out there.

One of the most tantalizing rumors is that Microsoft may look to offer those who buy its device compatible versions of all of the iTunes tracks they own. That would cost the software maker a bundle, but Microsoft may believe that is what it takes to make its player competitive. Plus, as many bloggers have noted, iTunes-purchased tracks tend to make up just a fraction of the tracks on the typical user's iPod.

http://news.com.com/2061-10799_3-6092937.html?part=rss&amp;tag=6092937&amp;subj=news

[Jason Eaton]

Sorry... tangent here...

How would one prove what songs they have purchased from iTunes? It is not like Apple will give up a listing of their consumers purchase. I haven't saved my email receipts... maybe I am just missing something but, um yeah... those other songs with the missing metadata... um yeah I purchased those through iTunes too... nod nod wink wink.


Back on course...
I don't know where you guys stand but this is all lipstick on the pig. Feel free to quote that. :D

I purchased a digital music player, and mine does just that. To me there isn't much more to innovate on, no new features I need. I am just down to the nitty gritty. Quality playback, storage, and battery life. The rest is just fluff. To me the mainstream purpose of the digital music player has already arrived. The rest of this is all hype and strutting between companies in a pissing contest.

In the end its hard to sell fluff and piss as something I need.

[Kent Pribbernow]

Of course, if the experience is anything like WMP10 on the Pocket C, Apple has nothing to worry about, except increased production demands for the iPod. :roll:

Glad someone else feels this way. I find the notion that a PDA, particularly a Windows Mobile device, can suitably replace an iPod as a viable media player as laughable at best. The iPod experience is intuitive, and painlessly simple. You dock it, it syncs your library and playlists....and you're done. Contrast that with a typical PPC phone or Palm device and you have the opposite extreme. The embedded playback software sucks, the desktop client software is gut wrenchingly bad. And the process of moving content is ridiculously flawed. Microsoft has a LONG way to go before the nail down multimedia support. What's really strange is that technically they are halfway there now. ActiveSync offers a live, always-on, connection to the desktop as a mountable storage medium, which is largely how iPod/iTunes sync works. Unfortunately everything past that point is sucktactular.

I was hopeful that Windows Vista might be the bridge that crosses the gulf, but based on my experiences with the most recent builds I don't see great leaps and bounds made in that category. *sigh*

[Felix Torres]

Nice to have a juicy rumor for the coming dog days of summer, huh?

Here's two interesting links:

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17145&amp;ch=infotech

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/argo/
If you follow the links to engadget you'll get a few more hints.

My take on this?

1- Antitrust? Baloney. Apple claims 80% of the market, MS has zero. Anybody trying to sue MS for media player hardware gets laughed out of court. Besides, companies that license tech and compete with their licensees are a dime a dozen. It happens all the time. Creative and Co may not like it, but their choices at this point are to follow Rio out of the market or hope MS grows the overall WMA market enough that they can catch the spillover. Of course, Apple could license Fairplay at reasonable terms out of sheer terror of the great power MS brings to this market... Riiighhhttt! Cold day in the Amazon, right? In this market, Apple would be the monopolist, not MS, *if* there were any, which I don't think is true. This market is way too small and way too immature for anybody to have a real monopoly. Think PDAs circa Y2K; PALM was overwhelmingly dominant and MS-licensees an also-ran. 5 years later...

2- I'm thinking MS may have a more proximate target than Apple for an Argo project, one that would yield bigger gains quicker. Namely SONY. If the Argo project is directly tied-in to the XBOX, say with a Live-based Music service and full-feature Media Player that allowed managing and *feeding* the Argo players *without* a PC, but with an XBOX, they would put a triple squeeze on Sony; hitting them in their home market of consumer electronics, driving a stake through the heart of Connect (if its still alive...anybody know if Connect is still...connected? ;-) ), and finally, raising the ante for the PS3 just before release. Given my experience with the 360 as a media distribution vehicle/player, I think MS might have a very compelling story come XMAS if they brought Urge to Live. Especially if they center the whole thing around video. The more MS adds to the 360 resume, the higher the challenge the PS3 will face, and they already are looking up from a very deep hole; 10 million installed base, significant price differential, Xbox live, Live Marketplace, Live Arcade/Arcade wednesdays, etc.

3- If MS does in fact build Argo off the 360 ecosystem, instead of the Windows ecosystem, they would be essentially doing an end-run on Apple *and* the existing PlaysForSure licensees; cause none of their products are living-room friendly. A PC-less Argo, fed via XBOX, would have its own separate market (of 20 Million potential customers by 07) and would even allow for subscription-subsidized hardware that would not canibalize the PlaysForSure market and would serve to build up a digital media-delivery channel off the 360 platform. Considering the efforts MS has put into getting movie trailers into Live and the whole deal with EPIC and the artist of the month promos it is clear they do intend to ramp up Live into a full-blown digital media distribution system, so expanding into musc with streaming music, subscriptions, and out-right sales makes perfect sense. And so does the description of Argo as a family of products; cause users of a 360-fed subscription-based service could get by with a 512Mb flash RAM player on the low-end and something like that could be free with a subscription and they'd still make money. And if the same distribution/management tech is used for games, an XNA-based gaming function would be a piece of cake to implement; they could debut with a hundred games in the first three months just by migrating games already on Windows Mobile devices. So, if Argo is in fact XBOX-based (a *BIG* if; nobody has sad anything about that, after all), there would be room for as many as 4 separate Argo products:

1- A low-end flash-based music-only player for well under $50, maybe free with subscription
2- A mid-end flash-based music/video player (4GB?) for under $100
3- A HDD-based music/video/gaming pad (maybe even ebooks? I can only dream) with PDA functions for $200
4- A top of the line do everything Pad for $300 with a big (>30GB) HD and big screen.

The pictures of the alleged prototype for Argo make it out to be very PPC-ish in size and screen and it would certainly provide a quick jumpstart if the top of the line model were in fact based on PPC components. I wonder if HTC has a hand in this somewhere. 8)

Of course, we may just be looking at another Origami panic, with folks (me included) jumping to conclusions. Just because clues point in a given direction doesn't mean that MS is going that way. MS *has* been known to design hardware simply to serve as reference platform for a new software/service effort. And, in fact, the alleged Argo prototype looks a lot like an over-size Toshiba Gigabeat, which is already on the market, is already fully PlaysForSure-compatible (all 5 ways), and is already 360-compatible. So maybe Argo will simple be new Media Player software for XBOX and new features for Live...

But its a lot more fun to speculate wildly than to wait two months for the big announcement at the September XBOX party... ;-)

[Felix Torres]

Sorry... tangent here...

How would one prove what songs they have purchased from iTunes?

The rumor, and that's all it is, a rumor, is that the MS media player would scan the HD for Fairplay-protected AAC files. Given that Fairplay is just a wrapper around unprotected AAC files, it wouldn't be that hard to get to the unprotected file (been done repeatedly by both Real and the Op-en Sourcerors) and then read the metadata.
And if there is no Metadata? No tickee, no shirtee.
Its a freebie, after all.

Not sure how valid the rumor is, anyway, because the viability of this is tied in to the licensing rates the studios charge, their willingness to accept a smaller payment from MS for the replacement files, and, most of all, how concerned the studios are with Apple's domination of the buck-a-song market.

The cost of such a "feature" wouldn't be all that big, btw; figure 10-20 cents per song and even if every Apple customer jumped ship, the cost would not be more than a $100 million. Or, about three days worth of MS profits. :twisted:

[Phronetix]

I was hopeful that Windows Vista might be the bridge that crosses the gulf, but based on my experiences with the most recent builds I don't see great leaps and bounds made in that category. *sigh*

In all fairness to MS, the early builds of OS X were shadows of its current self.

[Felix Torres]

More tidbits...
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/microsoft-zune-update-186628.php

This is starting to look like controlled leakage. :P