If they are losing money as it is.. why not then go the full step and undercut the price of the ipod, instead of selling at the same price?

In-fucking-credible. Is there an MS product that isn't a loss-leader besides Windows and Office? I can't believe MS is still racking in the cash every quarter with so many loss-leaders.

Consumers should be kissing Apple's and Nintendo's collective asses for making Sony and MS sell their products cheaper than they can make them.

It's just sad that MS and Sony are trying to grab market share by throwing money at the problem.

The Xbox unit has lost billions. I full expect this to be the same, and to do more to cannibalize WMA player sales than to affect the iPod sales. Apple has managed to "sell cool" with the iPod, and it's not very easy to affect the selling of cool unless you are cool yourself. MS is not cool.

The business model doesn't quite make sense to me... PS/PS2/PS3 and X-Box can soundly afford to be loss-leaders (sorta), because even if Sony and MS lose money for each unit of hardware they sell, they can make money selling software and through licensing to 3rd party software vendors.

What's the equivalent of software to the Zune? Music that they'll sell for 99 cents?

Last I heard, Apple was barely breaking even with music sold through iTMS. Apple's business model works ONLY because they rake in the money through hardware sales.

So let me get this straight. MS loses money on each Zune they sell. They will also only break even, if not lose money, on each song they sell through their service.


Sniff-sniff... do I smell failure in the air?

It would be funny if Apple dropped their prices again to $229/$329. It wouldn't accomplish anything other than pissing M$ off, so it's not going to happen.

Note that I think that Apple ought not to do something like this because then M$ might try to claim that Apple can sell for a lower price because they have a lower quality player than Zune. None of us would believe it, but what about everyone else?

Jesus wept!

What a screamingly horrible bit of crap this zune thing is!

How can any company seriously think that sending this thing out to fight the Goliath that is iPod has any chance of success?

Honestly, who here thinks M$ just set themselves up for one giant kick in the nuts when Apple release the updated, real video iPod - that does everything the zune chunk does and more, sells for less and is waaaaaay cooler to own?

And M$ are releasing a zune phone? HA HA HA HA! Hang on a second, I think I'm gonna vomit from laughing too hard... I can just imagine the phone thing they'll release: no signal strength, 30 minute talk time, at least 2 security updates a week and it'll hang up on you when you least expect it. That and the fact that it'll only be available in 'avocado'.

These clowns just can't get anything right. It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking that Apple secretly bought out M$ a couple of years ago and are deliberately making crap products to make Apple look good!

Let's recap the zune hi-points:

It's available in brown.
It's got wi-fi so it's battery life will suck.
It's larger than the same capacity iPod.
It's only available for PC
They'll lose money on every unit sold.

In short, they're making a bad product and selling it at a loss?

Brilliant.

Apple = good, M$ = evil, right? If apple is seeing mac sales going up because of the iPod 'halo' effect does that mean the zune could see increased sales from the xbox 'horny' effect?

What I don't understand is how does Apple make so much money on this but Microsoft can't?