Last updated on 2012-04-17, by Tony

3 Reasons For The Fall Of Zune

After ten-year evolution, iPod remains a dominator in digital market. After five-year challenge, Zune has finished its journey. In 2011, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of all Zune hardware and hoped that users would pay more attention to Windows Phone.

Nowadays the battle between Microsoft and Apple is turning white-hot. The battles between Windows 8 and iOS in tablet and between Lumia 900 and iPhone are just starting this year. However, one year ago, the battle between Microsoft and Apple in Mp3 field has ended.

To be honest, Zune is theoretically the biggest competitor of iPod for its configuration. Equipped with 3.3-inch OLED display, which is also a captive touch screen, Zune can save more power energy. With a duration time of 8.5 hours and 480×272 screen resolution, Zune is no less powerful than iPod.

Microsoft released Zune with the hope of winning the market and challenging the dominating position of iPod. However, even Microsoft could not expect that Zune would end its task in such a short time. This post will view three reasons for the fall of Zune.

1. Wrong market strategy

Zune marched towards a wrong direction in terms of market strategy. Microsoft signed deals with Wayne, EMI and BGM to allow them provide relative resources and services for Zune. Microsoft thought while the same model could help it make money with Xbox, Zune would gain great success as well.

However, this proved to be wrong. For one thing, this mode was far less sexy than that of iPod, for another, users were reluctant to get songs in a high price. This mode also refused the selling of apps from third-party which made the apps for Zune much less than that of iPod in number.

2. High price tag

Microsoft ruined Zune with high price tag. With such a powerful machine, Microsoft decided to challenge the position of iPod in high end product market. As a latest product, Zune was marked with a price tag of $300. Consumer would choose to buy iPod which has enjoyed a good reputation for years other than Zune, a strange product to them with this price tag.

Microsoft moved too far on its way to challenge iPod in the beginning of the battle instead of building a good image in the market. Every year, iPod would update its product which would turn out to be popular. With such a high price tag, Zune lagged far behind in competiveness.

3. Low sales volume

The key factor for Zune’s fall was its bad performance in the market since its release. Till 2007, over 1.2 million units of Zune were sold while over 100 million units of iPod were sold. Till May 2008, over 2 million units of Zune were sold.

In the Christmas, Microsoft surprisingly found that the sales revenue of Zune was 85 million dollars during Christmas period, far less than that of 185 million dollars last year. What’s worse, the sales revenue of iPod in the fourth quarter of 2008 amounted to 3.37 billion dollars. Since then the fall of Zune was destined.

Since Zune just supports mp4 and wmv files and it won’t be updated any more, users may need some converters to help you convert videos. You can convert other files to wmv files with Video Converter or convert swf files to wmv files with Moyea Flash to WMV Converter for Zune.