12-13-2006, 04:00 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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More Advertising Not The Answer
"Microsoft's entry into the portable music space has been more whimper than bang, with the unit seeing fairly brisk sales early on, only to have consumer interest quickly wane...Zune reviews have been mixed, with one of the more annoying shortcomings being that the much ballyhooed WiFi functionality falls short -- prohibiting you from doing any of the cool things you'd expect to be able to do with a wireless music player. Last week Microsoft worked hard to defend Zune sales by saying their internal expectations (1 million by June) were on target. This week they've announced their miracle solution to the lack of consumer interest: pour more money into an already bloated advertising budget to highlight the device's largely unused music sharing capabilities."
I agree with the author that pouring more money into the advertising budget isn't going to sell more product: there's a reason why most reviews have been neutral to negative, it's that the Zune needs improvement in a big way. And focusing on the crippled WiFi is a horrible idea. Every single person I've told about the Zune and how it uses WiFi reacts the same way: "It sounds...lame. Why would I send someone a song that will bomb out after three days?". It's a bad scenario no matter how you slice it - the "social" aspect of the Zune is a non-starter right now, and emphasizing that only complicates things.
In some ways, I think it might actually hurt the Zune long-term for Microsoft to sell more of the Zune in it's current incarnation. There are too many rough edges, too many missing features, too many broken scenarios. I'd like to see Microsoft re-direct some of that money into paying for a Divx codec. Yeah, that's right, WMV just doesn't cut it - especially when the Zune software on the desktop is so limited and it's so hard to get content into WMV (no, spending $99 to fix the problem is not a realistic solution). Channel some money into software development to accelerate the pace of improvements. Basically, anything other than advertising - because the product, frankly, just isn't ready for prime time yet (and it pains me to say that as a guy running a Zune Web site).
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