Why no open application marketplace for the Zune?
Seitz noted that the Windows Mobile group is already working on a mobile application marketplace. Even though Zune isn’t currently taking advantage of that fact, he said, the company wants to avoid an overlap between the two development teams.
“We’re trying to get out of the business of building similar things in the company that don’t work together, and the Windows Mobile team is tackling the challenge of a mobile apps marketplace right now, Seitz said. “We don’t necessarily line up perfectly with that, to take advantage of whatever ends up coming out of that from the Zune HD standpoint, but down the line if there’s a way that we can plug into what they’re doing, I’m sure we’ll look into whether that makes sense for the business.”
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Zune HD to get Twitter, Facebook as Microsoft abandons ‘squirting’ Sawickpedia says: This is laughable and classic strategy for a big company - compromise the integrity of product a so that product group b doesn’t feel bad and having to compete with an internal group. The Innovator’s Dilemma talks about how why new upstarts often beat incumbents and this is a perfect example. Incumbents make all sorts of internal compromises for their own internal political reasons. The reality is that customers don’t give a flying hoot about your internal politics. Give the market what it will want to buy or die. Microsoft is clearly killing any Zune potential for the sake of its effectively dead Windows Mobile OS. Microsoft has at least lost round 1 of the portable/mobile computing fight to Apple (and RIMM too for that matter). This is dangerous as I am not sure Microsoft can recover as computing moves more mobile and smaller. |
