Macintosh, Mac Apps, iPhone, Steve Jobs, Apple

Microsoft Zune Hotness Worldwide?

by Jayvee on November 14th, 2006

I can very well understand the repercussions of wireless sharing of music in the United States. They’ve got a great backend system there, since that’s where they’re from - I’d say with the advent of the iTunes Music (and Video) Store, prepaid cards and iTMS accounts are hot. Here in the Philippines though, you can’t even register for an iTunes Store account without a foreign home address.

So the concept of music sharing here in the Philippines is .. well .. a “free concept.” Free in the sense that the music we do get either comes from a P2P network (we have very lax laws here) or from a flea market that sells album compilations for the equivalent of USD $1.50.

If When the Zune comes to the Philippines I highly doubt that we will be seeing a lot of this peer to peer music sharing. It will probably go as far as Zune owner number 1 thanking Zune owner number 2 for the name of that track he’d been hearing all week and then proceed to download it off the Internet on some free Russian server.

The Apple Insider says that the Zune will need a lot of time to take off — and I agree to this. The concept of wireless music in every corner is still far fetched so we really have to wait and see how Microsoft will pick up. In the meantime, there isn’t any Ceteris Paribus here — it almost seems like Microsoft is assuming that Apple will stay put with their iPod line, but knowing Jobs, he will be ready to innovate even further.

I guess what I’m saying is that the culture will be different in every region. MySpace is virtually non existent in the Philippines. Friendster is hot here. Orkut is hot in Brazil. To each his own DRM …

Good for everyone. In the end the consumer wins - Apple stops sitting on its laurels and Microsoft tries to push the envelope further. Let us just see how far around the world both companies can push.

Share This

Related Stories

Should Microsoft even mention it?
Should Apple Give Money For Every iPod Sold?
A Sign That Zune Won’t Kill The iPod
Surprise!
Jobs To Kick Off AWDC 2007

POSTED IN: Jayvee's Posts, Zune, iTunes