While Microsoft's Zune HD is definitely enough to pump up Microsoft's profile in portable music players, it's lacking a "wow" factor that's going to make it a true competitor to Apple's dominant iPods. It was already clear Microsoft and Zune HD face an uphill battle to compete with Apple in the space but, at the moment, Zune HD isn't doing much more than keeping Microsoft in the game. Maybe that's enough.
Zune HD preorders began Thursday through Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Microsoft stores and other locations, and there are a number of reasons to at least welcome Zune HD into the competition with an appreciative nod. What's the biggest of those? Well, after years of iPod dominance and the failure of the first Zune to make any real waves, the market for portable media players could stand to be more than one device to rule them all -- and a vendor with Microsoft's muscle guarantees it'll at least get noticed.
The name itself, Zune HD, is no lie, either: Zune HD's 16-GB version offers as much as five hours of hi-def video and 22 hours of standard video, and the 32-GB model offers 10 hours of hi-def. The Zune HD can also support HD video playback through an HDMI A/V docking station. The highlights don't stop there, either, and they've been well-documented: Zune HD has a touch screen -- a sweet 3.3-inch OLED with a 16:9 wide-screen format display and 480 x 272 pixel resolution -- and gets its processing juice from Nvidia's Tegra System-on-Chip, hailed for its low-power consumption.
But what is going to be enough to scare Apple, which can't make a move -- or hint at a move -- without a million bloggers tearing their hair out in breathless anticipation? With Apple rumored to be launching the next generation of its iPod and iPod Touch as early as this fall, the speculation's already feverish. There's a reason why, in other words, Apple claims 73 percent of the digital music player market, while Microsoft claims a paltry 2 percent, according to NPD.
The Zune HD's best feature is probably its pricing, with the 16-GB starting at $219.99 and the 32-GB at $289.99. Those prices are significantly lower than analogs in the iPhone family, with Apple's 16-GB iPod Touch starting at $299 and the 32-GB starting at $399. Even the baby iPod Touch, the 8-GB version, cracks $229 -- so there's at least an excuse for Microsoft to keep piling on the "Apple's too expensive" bandwagon.
But the successful supplanting of market leaders in particular categories takes wow factors -- seismic shifts in the mind-sets of consumers and an "aha" moment where they realize what they've come to expect as a standard (i.e., the iPod) is suddenly on the defensive. There's nothing about Zune HD to suggest it has that kind of muscle, not yet anyway. Early Zune HD sales might prove encouraging, but it's almost impossible to believe Microsoft won't still looking up at Apple.
