harikari.com

As a public service, I just thought I’d give you and all other iPod faithful a heads up: Microsoft’s “Zune” (regardless of its inferiority to the iPod) will eventually defeat it.

I was involved in a class action suit against MS, settled out of court naturally, so I know how the company functions. The secret to MS’s success has always been “bundling”, that is combining several of their crap products together with their only good one (Windows) and telling computer suppliers they must buy them together or MS won’t sell them Windows. Other times MS would offer suppliers its other products for free with Windows, as long as the suppliers didn’t buy the rival product.

This is how MS’s Internet Explorer managed to crush Netscape’s Navigator in the 90’s and become the #1 web browser – despite the fact that everyone agreed Navigator was a far better product. MS told suppliers that if they wanted to buy Windows, they MUST also pre-install Explorer, AND NOT even offer Netscape as an option. Because Windows was already the dominant Operating System, the computer suppliers had no choice but to cave in.

When Microsoft began its attack, Netscape controlled over 80% of the market share (very similar to where the iPod stands now). Just one year later Netscape was down to 50%, and in only 3 years Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had succeeded in crushing its superior rival and now controlled roughly 80% of the browser market.

Be warned, it doesn’t matter that Microsoft’s Zune is an inferior product. All MS needs to do (and they will) is start offering ‘free’ Zune software pre-installed on all Windows computers and put up some roadblocks to make Windows much less compatible with the iPod. The iPod only took off once it became Windows-compatible. As soon as it becomes too much of a hassle for the average consumer to use an iPod with their Windows computer, Zune will take over. The only question is when this will happnen, not if.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

While I’m not one to dismiss any Microsoft endeavor out of hand, I have to agree that this Zune is a pretty week competitor. The pricing of songs in the store alone is mind-bogglingly un-userfriendly. And the social aspect of it, if it is as bad as what I’ve read, makes the feature pretty useless.

Now, I don’t think these issues are enough to doom the product. And there have been similar complaints about the iPod over the years. But MS has some work to do, dirty bundling tricks and all, before it will be able to take market share from Apple. And I do believe they’re 100% capable of it.