DBWI: iPod rapidly loses marketshare to Zune/Zen mp3 players

JJohnson

Banned
Apple's iPod is copied by Microsoft in August 2002, and called Zune, quickly followed by a color screen two years later. In 2003, Creative launches its own line to compete with Microsoft and Apple. By 2004, a three-way race evolved with Apple, Microsoft, and Creative each attempting to outdo each other in player abilities. Creative had the first photo viewer to allow gif and jpeg, while Microsoft's player became the first to allow wmv and avi files. Apple struggled to catch up with the video iPod, but the building momentum on the Zune culminated in the Zune Phone of March 2007, the big media event of that year.

Apple's thunder was stolen yet again by an aggressive Microsoft, whose touch-screen Zune phone and Zune store allowed customers to buy music or subscribe to music channels over wifi, and make calls while using Office Mobile on their phones, all while using wireless keyboards or the onscreen touch-keyboard.

In a close second, the audiophile choice, Creative's Zen X-Fi player, with wide compatibility, including Divx and Xvid files, and ogg/flaac support, make it a favorite amongst people with a wide variety of files. Apple did eventually release an iPhone in fall of 2007, but it was now seen as a copycat of Microsoft's successful Zune phone, and couldn't stem the tide. Apple had fumbled, and Microsoft recovered against the almost-cool-again Apple to become the 'in' company of 2008. Apple's sales have slid since 2004, and it's new OS X 10.4 has been delayed, with rumors of its shelving for touch-screen functionality to be built in.

Meanwhile, Windows Avalon, with its WinFS file system and fancy multi-touch interface, first seen in MS Surface, has wowed consumers in laptops and desktops for the third straight quarter since release in 2008.

What if the iPod had won? Would Apple be able to do something without fumbling it again?

(OOC: I hope this is how DBWI is done)
 
Well, maybe Apple wouldn't have gone into the gaming industry as rapidly if it was able to win the consumer hardware market with its 'pods. They'd have no incentive to switch. I remember when Steve Jobs declared at E3 2004 that "The future of music is in games" and started rocking out on Guitar Master. That was certainly a big shift in appearance in attitude. Without the development of the iPlay, we'd still be making fun about how the best way to cure someone of a gaming addiction is to buy them a Mac. How ironic that an Apple gaming desktop is able to beat a Microsoft-made console and steal a hefty slice of the PC gaming share.
 
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Well really I think Apple can thank their success in videogaming to the failure of the established Japanese players more than anything else- Nintendo's "Revolution" appeals to Nintendo fanboys and pretty much no one else, and Sony's odd motion-sensitive controller proved to be little more than a gimmick, and combined with overly expensive Blu-Ray when the movie studios went HD-DVD was doomed to failure.

Anyway, Apple can't innovate, I think that's well-known, all they can do is make things look nice. They've been trapped with PowerPC processors- alright, the G7 is fairly impressive (though Intel is still beating them even with the much-decried legacy code), but the heat requirements are ridiculous and they may never be able to bring it to the Powerbook or iBook. (Plus, Apple doesn't make PowerPCs, they're from IBM) All Apple can do is make things look nice, I guess... I mean, you have to admit the iPhone is pretty nice-looking, though I always thought the design was more of a Motorola ripoff than a Zune ripoff. (Hell, I'd rather rip off Motorola than Microsoft any day- just look at the sales chart!)
 
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