Microsoft targets the iPod
June 19, 2006 by Mike Wendland
Bill Gates may be stepping down from day-to-day work responsibilities (hey, wouldn’t you if you were worth $50 billion?), but Microsoft’s main target these days remains the new century’s most impactful personal technology device: the iPod.
Microsoft says it is committed to developing a rival music player that will give the Windows platform the same boost the iPod did to all things Apple. I interviewed Steve Balmer a year or so ago. He was fresh back from a trip to Asia and was gushing over some new music players he saw in development there. He had that familiar Ballmer gleam in his eye and told me then that the iPod domination wouldn’t last forever, that better devces were coming.
Now, Microsoft has reportedly developed something of its own that it is showing to music producers.
But is it too late? The iPod is an icon now. Can the momentum be shifted to a Microsoft product? I’m skeptical. I know people who have two and three iPods… that’s how much iPods have entwined themselves into our digital lifestyle.
It’s not going to happen. Microsoft will not lay a glove on Apple and the iPod. They’re way too late to the party. As usual. two years ago when the iPod started to get traction, yeah, they probably could have done it. Not now. No way.
I love my Macs and my iPods, but I think that they will eventually lose oout to something. The iPod is a fantastic device, but has a long way to go in the improvement categroy. If it does not stay cutting edge, it will lose out.
I agree with Ripley above… Apple has too big of a lead and too much of an inroad into the culture. Microsoft is too late to the party. It’s a good thing Bill Gates is retiring.
Don’t count MicroSnot out yet, look what they did with XBox, and they were playing catch-up then too. Will they depose the IPod? Though I don’t see it happening I have to admit to the possibility that it may.