Microsoft says "watermelon red" Zune is in the works
By Paul Miller 
posted April 5th 2007 5:12AM
posted April 5th 2007 5:12AM
When will the madness end? While Microsoft ponders the future of its Zune line (free Zunes? We vote yes!), the whole "what mysterious color might we release the Zune in next?" song and dance is keeping us occupied surprisingly well. Apparently the next flavor to hit the shelves, after that fashionista-fave pink version hits on May 1st, is "watermelon red." Don't worry about that artist's rendition to the top, we're sure Microsoft's actual version will look much more watermelon-ish, just worry about how silly you're going to feel a few months down the road when you pull out your brown Zune and try to rock a few of your "so totally 2006" indie rock faves.
you would wish that microsoft could do a little more than produce different colours with the zune. a whole rethink is in order.
at last! all the rumors were true!
hmm...
It would be really cool, if Microsoft could make this one for supporting AIDS research, and all those other red-branded products to help find cures. I'm sure many people would buy it if they did that. I love my black Zune.
If this is all they can come up with then maybe they should just stop trying...
Stop crippling the WiFi,then I'll buy it.
By the way the red Zune photo is something I created for fun on Zune-Online. Its NOT an actual photo. The Red version may be quite different than this.
I guess this is an easier way to boost sales than, say, releasing the product outside of North America.
You know what I think they should do?
Make the available in the UK =| I'm sick of getting the worst of everything at ridiculous prices just because we're across the pond
Considering that Canada doesn't even have the Zune yet.. I think you may be in for a very long wait. :P
1st, apple made the red ipod.
Next microsoft copy with the red zune.
Also, as apple are making the iphone, will zune be making the zune phone?
-- Andy --
http://www.allsortgroup.com
Apple didn't invent the color red...
Andy, don't be an idiot, Microsoft already makes phones. (yes that's right before apple)
why does m$ keep flogging this dead horse ?
oh yeah, they can't come up with original ideas
still think the internet has no future bill g ??
How did you ever get "invent" "colour" "red" from "made "red" "iPod"?
Yes they did. And they were also the first company to launch a cellphone. Just look at the market. The iPhone comes out and BOOOOM, now there are cellphones everywhere!
Whats Canada?
Nice! It'll match the watermelon red revenue graph for the Zune
I'd buy a zune if the following were true:
plays Xvid/Divx
plays MP4
offers 80-100 gigabyte model at same size
It doesn't look like that bad of a player, but they have to do more then just release new colors.
Colors are nice but if it doesn't do what you want it to do to begin with that doesn't matter.
Never underestimate your average fanboy's ability to prove how shallow Apple users are on a daily basis.
Now they are saying that if you release a product in a color that Apple had released a product in, you are now "copying" them!
Maybe you guys need to focus on how poorly the Apple TV is doing and how bad the iPhone is going to fail, instead of attacking someone else's products.
@Bryan "Maybe you guys need to focus on how poorly the Apple TV is doing"
It's sold out everywhere in my city. they're selling the day they arrive at CompUSA. I got mine from Apple.com, but trying to get one locally for my father is nearly impossible. - Also it's been getting fantastic reviews basically across the board... so, i'm really curious, what makes you think it's doing "poorly"?
"[...] and how bad the iPhone is going to fail"
cute. I'll add your name to the growing list of nobodies who will look foolish in a few months.
"Never underestimate your average fanboy's ability to prove how shallow Apple users are on a daily basis."
Sure, fanboys may make apple users look bad, but extrapolating a few fanboys to pretend what they do is "proof" that "apple users are shallow on a daily basis" - well i dont even know how to respond to such an idiotic stretch. obviously you're just a hater, and there's no reasoning with haters.
Never underestimate how a hater can have no understanding whatsoever of what constitutes "proof," or even how how "logic" works.
Why do Ipod fanboys freak out so bad when it comes to the Zune? Does every Zune sold automatically delete a song off your Ipod or something? I bought a Zune because it did everything I needed and was $50 cheaper ($199 during Office Max sale) than the 30G Ipod. Is it better? Nope. Is it as good? For me it is.
So what the problem with MS making a red Zune? SanDisk, Ilo, Sony, Creative Labs, iRiver, RCA, Lennox and a bunch of other MP3 players come in red. Nothing unusual there. How is this some crazy idea?
I think iPods are great. Apple took what the other MP3 player manufacturers had and made one better. They raised the bar. The Zune doesn't surpass it, it just pretty much meets it there. All good competition does is make for a better product. IPod lovers should be happy if Zune does alright. It means your iPod will get better and better. So why would you want the Zune to fail?
People who buy products that are "just good enough" vs buying a better product that works "as designed", are people who keep Microsoft in business.
The Zune is Microsoft's best example of this "just good enough" mentality, to keep customers chomping at the bit for version 2, and that's why we all feel it's worth mocking it...
Microsoft's "just good enough" days are about to hit a brick wall... Vista isn't good enough, Microsoft Live was crap, Zune isn't good enough, and painting crap red doesn't make it any better crap.
Save the landfill, buy an iPod instead.
If by freak you mean laugh my ass off in mocking disgust, then yes, I'm freaking.
DW. I might add that the ipod has gone through nine (yes 9) revisions.
and I don't know how you think the Zune doesn't work "as designed", it is a simpler design than the ipod and is better for most people because it is cheaper.
In closing, don't be an idiot.
sweet, can we sell it for $20 more under the premise that we will donate $1 to AIDS research?
Look you can buy the Watermelon Red Zune already! It's on this website:
www.whocaresaboutaredzuneanyway.com
Umm, yup.
Got to be some combination of red/pink and green.
but is it seedless?
1999: "The one thing Apple's providing now is leadership in colors. It won't take long for us to catch up with that, I don't think." -- Bill Gates
2006: Zune. Brown.
I want to like the Zune... I really do. I like the fact that they're releasing different colors, but I wish they'd concentrating on enriching the player features (podcasting, gapless playback, etc) rather than making more colors for the Zune.
If they released firmware updates as often as they're announcing different colors for the Zune, I think the Zune might have a fighting chance in the mp3 player market. I know I'd buy one if a firmware update was released every other month (one month to program features and bug fixes and one month to test it before rollout) that had decent feature upgrades and bug fixes.
Is that really too much to ask for in an mp3 player?
Well, if you look at firmware updates, They are almost updating every two months. The Zune was release November 14, 2006. It came with Firmware 1.1. 1.2 was released on December 18, 2006, just one month after it was released. 1.3 came a bit later, as in March 28th. Four months after, while what you were asking for would have 2 updates in 4 months, the Zune had 2 updates in 5 months. Not too far off. I've been very happy with it.
But yes, I agree. The Zune needs podcasting, and better video support.
"Maybe you guys need to focus on how poorly the Apple TV is doing and how bad the iPhone is going to fail, instead of attacking someone else's products."
That's supposed to be ironic, right?
Wow, wonder where M$ got the red idea from. I mean it's not like they have a panache for primary colors.
psst!
Zunes Are For Dorks®
pass it on!
Love some of the definitions for Zune in the Urban Dictionary
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=zune
There are a group of 20somthings here where I work that use the term 'Zune' as an alternate to 'Sh*t'
"So why would you want the Zune to fail?" - chadow
History has shown that Microsoft's control of a particular market is not generally a good thing for consumers. Hence the natural inclination to want to see the Zune fail. And fail badly.
"History has shown that Microsoft's control of a particular market is not generally a good thing for consumers. Hence the natural inclination to want to see the Zune fail. And fail badly."
History has shown that any one company's control of a particular market is not generally a good thing or consumers. Right now, it's pobably fair to say that the MP3 market is controlled pretty much by Apple. And you want Microsoft to fail?
OK, makes perfect sense.
pink one is coming zune to retail
http://www.ebgames.com/gs/zune/zune.asp
"Right now, it's pobably[sic] fair to say that the MP3 market is controlled pretty much by Apple."
That's not true at all! I love Apple and their players and their software, but I don't love their DRM infested, low quality music files. I buy the CD and make my own high quality, DRM free MP3s. See, there is a choice. When there is a choice, the market is not "controlled."
Sorry - this is still trying to impose a double standard. When Microsoft has 95% of the computer market, it's a dangerous monopoly - when Apple has 75%+ of the MP3 market, it's just wholesome competition.
There are other MP3 players - many of them with more capabilities and at a lower price than the iPod - but the fact is, most people still buy the iPod. The very popularity of the iPod makes it desirable to a lot of people, if not for what it can do, then for the comfort and in-crowd feelings. That's one of the biggest draws to a well entrenched product: ie, the one with the biggest market share.
Microsoft has the marketshare because they got to the business market first and then fought hard (and sometimes inappropriately) to keep ahead. You get a computer - odds are almost 100% that you'll get it with Windows on it unless you go looking for something else.
When you walk into a Best Buy or Circuit City and go to the MP3 section, you don't just see a set of MP3 players - typically there'll be the iPod section with all the iPods shown and a ton of accessories - and then there'll be the 'others' like iRiver, Archos and Creative, typically all jammed into half the space and with at best a handful of mediocre accessories.
Guess which one people pay attention to?
It's exactly the same process in both cases.
So yes, if it is valid to criticise Microsoft for being a monopoly in the PC market and using that leverage to try to get into other markets, then it's equally valid to criticise Apple for being a monopoly in the iTMS/MP3 market and using that leverage to get people to buy Macs and to influence other markets.
Don't think so? Did you see Bill Gates going to London to talk to EMI?
I don't begrudge Apple's success in this market - heck, I don't even mind Apple trying to use that success to create sales in at best marginally related fields. But I do think one has to be a bit more realistic about what's going on and stop thinking that Apple can do no wrong while Microsoft can do no right.
Well Im glad that podunkville USA has sold out of their entire 15 AppleTV units. Im sure using a BS equation that only Apple users can understand, that translates into 10000000000 units that sold in 24 minutes. Borrowing a phrase that iFans like to use with the Zune:
"I dont know anyone that owns one!!"
And yes the iPhone will fail. Even Jobs wont put the sales number that high. Just because you hear people here talk up the thing does not mean that millions of people are going to snap up a 600.00 phone in real life. Talk is cheap, iPhones are 600.00.
"Sure, fanboys may make apple users look bad, but extrapolating a few fanboys"
Few? Obviously you don't read sites like this that often, because only a blind man would pretend that the majority of Apple users on this site and others don't behave in this typical childish way that Apple fans are famous for.
@ Bryan "Well Im glad that podunkville USA has sold out of their entire 15 AppleTV units"
I'm glad you are able to make asinine assumptions and not feel like a moron who has to imagine up evidence to support his argument (which, incidentally, is exactly what you are.)
My podunk USA town has a population of nearly 600,000, which puts it in the largest 50 cities in the country, as well as being a suburb of the city with the 10th largest downtown district in the states.
the area i refer to as being sold out of Apple TVs is an area with a population of 2.4 million people. welcome to podunk.
I never made any claim that aple sold "1000000000" units, whereas you DID make the claim that it is a market failure, of which you have absolutely no evidence, and which all anecdotal evidence is to the contrary.
about the iPhrase "i dont know anyone who owns one" is an interesting thought exercise. I know a lot of people who are total win-heads and not a single one of them owns a zune. Not even at the (internal) Microsoft help desk call center where a bunch of my friends work, has anyone ever even heard of someone who owns one.
They're also well stocked in all the stores locally, at least a dozen at each store sitting unsold.
On the other hand, i can name nearly 2 dozen people *that i know personally* who've recently purchased Apple TVs. now this isn't to say that somehow Apple will sell an imaginary number of the units in the next half-second, but certainly based on my own anecdotal evidence, it's no market failure by any reasonable metric.
I also dont believe it'll be a smash hit like the iPod, but i'll go out on a (very sturdy) limb here and say that apple will make more PROFIT off the Apple TV *this year* than Sony will on their PS3 in the next 4 years.
- and yes, "few". Just because there is a loud minority of a few dozen dumbass apple fanboys, doesn't mean that the hundreds of thousands of Apple users are somehow even related to these fools. i seriously doubt you could even find 3 dozen unique names of people commenting around here being truly "shallow." (IE "apple invented red") - and even if you did, that's a statistically insignificant fraction.
cheers.
The Zune I bought a few weeks ago was white, but that was because it was for my wife and she wanted it in iWhite. If I buy one for myself it will brown. I'm not seeing whats wrong with brown for so many of you. Sure, $h*t is brown...but so was Jesus's hair. Martin Luther King was kinda brown, as was Gandhi. If I decide to rock the brown Zune, I'll be in good company.
Microsoft is to the PC OS, as Apple is to the MP3 player. Tell me again what that point about 'History' 'control' 'market' 'not a good thing' and 'consumers' was? Do we really want the market shares of MP3 players to look like the PC OS situation?
Ya know, I dislike things about MS as much as anyone. Unfortunately as far as an OS there isn't any other choice for me. There isn't another product that can do all I need it to do. Fortunately when it comes to MP3 players there is a choice. I personally hope it gets MORE competitive, and someone else makes a player on par with iPod, Zune, or even Zen.
Didn't you get the memo? Microsoft is dropping the DRM.
To say that Microsoft is a monopoly because they have 95% of market share really shows that you've misunderstood the whole reason MS got into trouble. That is not why MS was considered a monopoly in court. You should really learn historical facts before spouting off a huge diatribe.
Then whining about Apple having a bigger display in the store! That's classic! It's not up to Apple how big a store makes it's display. Stores push the products that make them money. They are under no obligation at all to sell anything but Apple, but there is a market out there for non-Apple MP3 players. And you can still go buy a CD anywhere because there is a market for non-Apple music tracks.
Now, an example of Apple being a monopoly, or in essence being monopolistic, would be them mandating something like, "Our iTunes music sales are so strong, that you retailers can't sell any more iPods unless you fill them with DRM'ed music tracks from the iTunes Music Store and charge them for it."
It would be nice if Microsoft would follow the lead of other industry heavyweights and hook up a (product)red edition, which donates a portion of sales to help fight AIDS in Africa. Why not? MS is a big enough company to be charitable aren't they? And it might help generate a little good will toward the product.
This is typical of Microsoft. No attempt to be better connected with society and the human spirit. All engineering and feature set.
"Sorry - this is still trying to impose a double standard. When Microsoft has 95% of the computer market, it's a dangerous monopoly - when Apple has 75%+ of the MP3 market, it's just wholesome competition.
...
So yes, if it is valid to criticise Microsoft for being a monopoly in the PC market and using that leverage to try to get into other markets, then it's equally valid to criticise Apple for being a monopoly in the iTMS/MP3 market and using that leverage to get people to buy Macs and to influence other markets."
Microsoft doesn't even sell computers (that I know of) - I think you mean operating systems & software and not "the PC market".
Also, MS wasn't considered a dangerous monopoly simply because it controlled such a huge segment of the OS market, nor was it because they were using their marketshare to try and get into other markets. MS was considered (and convicted) dangerous and monopolistic because it was doing things like billing OEM computer companies for a Windows license for every computer sold, even if that computer didn't have Windows on it (thus effectively making companies pay double for a computer with OS/2 installed, which would of course discourage them from even offering computers with OS/2). Practices like that were the reason MS got into legal trouble, not simply the fact that they were (by far) selling the most operating systems.
(You could say that Fairplay is something akin to that, but I don't think it is quite as agregious. Especially since most people don't even use the iTunes Music Store, so it doesn't affect 95% of iPod owners.)
As far as the DAP market goes, I would say there is healthy competition at the moment... Samsung & Sandisk are flourishing (Sandisk was very close to Apple in flash-based sales last time I checked), so obviously Apple can't be stifling competition.
Here are photos of the new colors. I'm not feeling the pink, but the red is actually quite lovely.
:)
http://www.zunescene.com/new-zune-colors/