The Zune brand will be “broadened” so it appeals to a more mainstream market, according to Microsoft’s Robbie Bach, President, Entertainment and Devices Division.

“You’ll also see us broaden the brand, where today I think the Zune brand is a little bit sort of in the hard-core niche music space, we want to broaden it into the broader music space, and you’re going to see that happen again over time,” Bach told analysts at the Financial Analyst Meeting 2007.

“You are going to see more from us in terms of new software, in terms of new devices, in terms of new features. You’ll see us broaden our presence in the marketplace for sure going forward.”

This appears to support an earlier report that “Zune 2.0″ would be hitting stores before Christmas, and that Microsoft will expand the Zune family with new styles, sizes, and price points.

Bach also told the analysts that Microsoft was happy with how the Zune was going, having sold one million units, and that the company would continue to invest in the business.

“We’re about 10 to 12 percent market share in the category where we participate, which is the hard disk-based category,” he said.

“I said last year this was a three- to four- year effort to get us to scale and where we want to be. We feel like we’re right on track with that effort.”

Of course what Bach failed to mention was that the hard-disk-based media players are only a small proportion of the overall media player market, with most media players using flash memory for storage rather than hard disks. This means Microsoft’s market share of the total media player market is even smaller than it might at first appear.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 1:48 pm under Media players, Microsoft.

Read more entries by John Pospisil.
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