TECH.BLORGE.com had a chance to interview Terry Ferrell, senior product manager for the Zune market team, during this morning’s Zune launch conference call. The discussions focused on the second generation Zune, but it also shed light on the reasons why Microsoft released such a bland media player last year.

Microsoft’s first media player was met with mediocre praise. It was a decent player, but it stood in the shadow of the iPod. It turns out the second generation Zune is a lot more like the device Microsoft wanted to originally release. Polishing up old features and introducing new ones, many reviewers consider the Zune 80 to be the king of harddrive portable media players, but why didn’t Microsoft release this Zune last year as opposed to its mediocre brother?

It turns out there’s two reasons: politics and ignorance.

Regarding politics, Microsoft had partnerships with several entities such as MTV’s URGE music store. Microsoft, working hard to please everyone while maintaining specific standards for its product and service, had to make some sacrifices in order to release the Zune as fast as it did.

Regarding ignorance, apparently Microsoft didn’t think users would want certain features. After the release of the first generation Zune, users demanded the ability to wirelessly synchronize. Microsoft gave in, and that’s why the feature’s here today. Microsoft also received several complaints from users being unable to take part in "The Social". Introducing a concept like music sharing over Wi-Fi is difficult in a new product as many people won’t have the product, so finding people to share with would be difficult.

As a result, Microsoft built a social network for users to acompany the Zune 2.0, allowing Zune socialites to interact, discuss, and share their favorite music through the Internet application.

As for the DRM-free MP3 selection at the Zune music store, Microsoft learned that customers have embraced the freedom in owning MP3s, and the company will use that to their advantage. The Zune product managers believe that labels have already been hit hard from all sides with the DRM-free sale idea, and that it won’t take much to convince them to offer their catalog in MP3 format on the Zune music store. The biggest obstacle Microsoft faces in this issue is getting labels to provide MP3 tracks at the quality standards that Microsoft requires for its store.

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Entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 5:09 pm under Media players, Microsoft, Technology, Wi-Fi.

Read more entries by Danny Mendez.
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