Neowin "Confirms" Zune Will Go International This Year

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/07/microsoft-confirms-zune-to-go-international-this-year' target='_blank'>http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/...ional-this-year</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"After doing some digging, we can confirm that the release this fall will be international . While we were not able to get a list of countries that the Zune will ship to, we can confirm that it will be shipping to: Australia, China, and Europe. A company representative told me that there will be far more countries that the Zune will be shipping to. Stay tuned for more, including specs and pictures (We've seen the internal video!). I'll leave our readers with this: It's slim and you won't need a D-Pad. Feel free to speculate."</em></p><p>We pretty much knew that new hardware was coming this year, but the interwebs are blowing up over a <a href="http://twitter.com/brianseitz/status/1466684456" target="_blank">single tweet from Brian Seitz</a> where he confirmed that there's new hardware in the pipeline. People seem pretty excited about a new Zune, so that's good to see. The above quote from <a href="http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/07/microsoft-confirms-zune-to-go-international-this-year" target="_blank">this Neowin article</a> has more specifics than I've seen elsewhere - though I disagree with the use of "confirm" when they can't quote their source. At any rate, if this news is accurate, I'd say it's very big news indeed. Not only does it seem to firm up the rumour about an iPod Touch-like Zune (slim and no D-Pad), but it seems the Zune is finally ready to bust out of the confines of North America. Take this all with a large grain of salt mind you, because none of this is confirmed, but I think it's worth getting excited about! I wish I could add my own speculation into the mix based on what I learned spending two days with the Zune team, but I can't...I do hope though to be among the first to be able to provide you all with accurate information when the time comes.</p>

[Alber1690]

That's right Jason. You just wait...you'll get the official scoop from someone in the Zune team...

[inteller]

well this means the new zune will be unicode...or will at least support asian characters. I fully expect the first and second generations to be left out in the cold since they fired most of the people that worked on the firmware for those. That's why you've not seen any updates this spring.

[David Tucker]

Well if the changes are significant enough that they'd require new hardware then I can see no backwards support. But given the thus far stellar history of supporting all Zune models with new firmware then there's no reason to think they'll be stopping now.

[NathanScott]

I hope Unicode support comes to the older models, since it really isn't much more than a font issue.

[Togo]

I hope Unicode support comes to the older models, since it really isn't much more than a font issue.

My guess is that Microsoft is focussing on the new Zune HD instead of making updates on older firmware versions, but I hope for you that there will be an update.....

[grantpet]

at least when they go international someone is bound to get use out of their non native english speaking telephone support.

[Drunken Max]

It'd be really cool to get Zune market place over here (UK) . If only for the videos. Amazon MP3 downloads are getting all my business on music at the moment.