Why we will probably never see the Microsoft Zune in the UK
Microsoft’s Zune might be doing reasonably well in the US, but it certainly isn’t causing Steve Jobs and any of his Apple team sleepless nights. And besides it is hard to fathom how serious Microsoft is about the Zune hardware when it still hasn’t offered the product up for an international launch.
So this does beg the question will we ever see Zune hardware in the UK at all? I am beginning to think we won’t (though check out these exclusives!), but as for the interface and software that powers Zune that’s another matter.
ZDnet is reporting that Jose Pinero, Director of Communications for Microsoft’s TV, Video and Music Business is considering whether to import the Zune software and services to other platforms. The most obvious one would be the Windows Mobile series of handsets which we covered yesterday.
“Our next step is mobile phones, but we haven’t talked about a timeline for when that will happen,” he said.
This chimes with what the company has been saying about the Zune over recent months. It has confirmed that there will be one more Zune but after that Microsoft’s emphasis will be on converged devices i.e. mobile phones.
Zune music and video services will be integrated into the Xbox later this year.
